


Blind Date with a Belmont

by paintedrecs



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Adrian has significant issues, Adrian is a Literary Snob, Alcohol, Alive!Lisa, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Bad Decisions in General, Bookstore Owner!Adrian, Bottom!Adrian, Bottom!Trevor, Description of Past Physical Harm to Child (Adrian's Scar), Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Consent, Fireman!Trevor, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hinted Past Homophobia (Belmonts), Hints of Past Unhealthy Relationships, Human/Vampire Prejudice, M/M, Modern AU, One-sided Sypha/Trevor Interest, POV Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya, Religion, Soulmarks, Soulmates, Unprotected Sex, Versatile Trevor/Adrian, Wolf!Adrian, complicated families, discussions of trauma, imperfect parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 36,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: If there was one constant in Adrian's life, it was this: Belmonts could never be trusted.It'd been twelve years since they'd abruptly stopped hunting Adrian's family. His parents had never explained why the pact was formed, but after more than a decade of peace, Adrian finally learned to stop looking over his shoulder. Life in a small town, working in his mother's bookstore, was quiet and simple, if sometimes a bit dull.Then a new Belmont entered the picture: less threatening than he should be, with dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and a baffling interest in Adrian's newly proposed Blind Date with a Book display.From birth, Adrian had been taught to fear the Belmonts. Somehow, this one was different.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont
Comments: 176
Kudos: 274





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For bairu, who asked me for a much funnier, less angsty, considerably shorter version of this fic. I'm sorry; it developed emotions. I promise they're still happy.
> 
> Check the end notes for more details on the tags (and spoilers).
> 
> I have now read nearly every single Trevorcard fic on AO3, and I still feel that there is a shocking lack of AUs for this fandom, so...here I am again! I love these two, and I love exploring ways that they can build a life together.

When the Belmont moved into his neighborhood, Adrian immediately started packing. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, although he’d naively thought the last time—twelve years prior, almost far enough now for the memories to blur and fade—had actually _been_ the last.

“So much for human promises,” he murmured as he assembled another box, his hands still far too familiar with the motions, and began filling it with books. He flicked his hair over his shoulder in irritation and sat back on his heels, wondering how much he’d need to leave behind. Twelve years of relative peace, built on an apparently paper-thin truce, had made him careless. He’d stockpiled a seemingly endless array of _things_ , to a degree his childhood self would’ve never dared to dream.

Clothing; expensive hair care products; an extra closet filled entirely with coats and carefully polished boots, organized by height, from ankle to thigh; kitchen racks gleaming with bakeware; the pitch-black eyeliner and chunky jewelry Adrian hadn’t touched since he was sixteen and experimenting with rebellion and self-discovery. Then there were the newer purchases. The rugs he’d scattered tastefully across his hardwood floors. The plush chair he’d brought home only last week, setting it up by the window and assuming he’d have all the time in the world to use it.

And, of course, his books. Nearly every wall of his apartment had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase anchored to it, each shelf crammed full and meticulously arranged by genre and author. Adrian touched the smooth, slightly dusty surface he’d just emptied, then let his fingertips bump over the spines lining the shelf below it. While he had a number of collectors’ editions, sheltered behind glass in their own custom-built case, these were mostly paperbacks, lightweight and soft with use. No real value, other than the notes he’d written in the margins and the comforting texture of the pages he’d so often thumbed through.

It’d been too long; he was going about this all wrong. You were only meant to take what you could carry. The rest, like every piece of Adrian’s life up to his tenth birthday, was already lost.

He pressed his teeth into his lower lip in thought, until he could feel the sharp prick of his fangs against the tender, yielding flesh. Human and vampire both—and neither.

The Belmonts hated his father, but they hated Adrian more. Someone like him wasn’t supposed to be possible. His birth had thrown their ancient belief systems into disarray. His existence was an unforgivable offense: one he’d been a fool to think they’d ever set aside.

He sat with his books for a moment longer—thinking of the ones he’d nearly committed to memory, the stacks he had yet to read—then gently pushed the box away and stood to his feet. He’d been foolhardy and selfish for long enough. It was time to tell his mother.

***

“Are you sure he was a Belmont? And you only saw one?”

Adrian’s mother, like on every Sunday morning for the past eight years, was doing inventory in the store below Adrian’s apartment. She tucked a wayward blonde curl behind her ear and made a notation on the paper tablet she’d steadfastly refused to upgrade to digital.

She sounded far less concerned than Adrian had expected.

“One for now,” he confirmed, lifting a heavy box to the counter before his mother could ask, then tearing the top open in one easy motion while she was still rummaging for a pair of scissors. “Isn’t that how it usually works? Sending a scout to assess the situation.”

His mother gave him a gentle smile in thanks, but shook her head with a puzzled lift of her eyebrows. “Discretion has never been the Belmont way. They ride into battle in force, with their family crest blazing proudly. I’ve never met a Belmont who traveled alone, or unannounced.”

She was, without stating it outright, repeating her earlier question. They’d built too much of a life here: a home, a business, a friendly community that had welcomed a troubled family with kindness and unexpected generosity, helping them to get on their feet, to finally relax after years of running. Leaving all this behind, with Adrian’s father still out of town and unable to determine the risk or flee with them, was too much to ask.

Adrian knew that. But he was certain.

“He may not have announced himself, but he’s not hiding his name,” Adrian said, inclining his head toward the narrow window that linked their bookstore with the cafe next door.

It was a particularly warm summer morning, the air thick and languid with humidity; a couple hours earlier, Adrian had given up on sleep and had tucked himself into a corner table with a book and a tall glass of iced mocha. He’d been flipping a page, idly clinking the coffee-soaked ice against his teeth and wondering if he should buy a pastry or head back upstairs to make breakfast, when he’d heard Hector calling out an order.

“Trevor,” Hector had said, pitching his voice to carry over the usual low hubbub of conversation. “Scrambled hash with extra sausage for Trevor.”

Adrian had glanced up, surprised by both the calorie-laden order and the fact that Hector was announcing it, rather than simply carrying the plate to the table by the entrance, where Trevor and Ezra had spent nearly fifty years playing chess and grouching about the degrading state of the world.

But Hector had apologetically waved the two old men back to their seats, clarifying with another call that, this time, was loud enough to reach the tables outside. “Order for Trevor _Belmont_ ,” he’d said, and Adrian’s hand had clenched so hard around his glass, he’d feared for a moment it might shatter.

“He didn’t see you?” Adrian’s mother asked, some of the expected worry finally creeping into her voice.

Adrian shook his head. He’d slipped out the back entrance, through the kitchen, while the decidedly _not_ 80-year-old Trevor had been collecting his take-out bag.

“I texted Hector. He said the Belmont’s renting a room from Margaret but only got into town late last night. I don’t think he knows yet where we are.” Hector hadn’t asked why Adrian wanted that information; they’d been friends for long enough that Adrian trusted him to keep the exchange quiet, if not with the reason behind it.

He took in their surroundings one last time, wondering if this was how his parents had felt during the decade they’d spent running. He’d been too young, then, and too accustomed to that way of life to know that it was possible to get attached to a place, or to the people in it. He breathed in the comforting scents of paper, binding glue, and slightly-burnt coffee, listening to the hum of voices sifting through the wall they shared with the cafe, to the click of the fan as it turned from side to side, stirring the warm air and the tendrils of sweat-curled hair around his mother’s face.

Adrian could feel the heat, its damp weight pressing against his skin, but it didn’t sink in further, or affect him physically. It was one of the many small ways an attentive Belmont would always be able to pick him out of the crowd—to identify him as something different, something that wasn’t meant to be a part of the human world.

“They only want me,” Adrian said, quietly, putting into words the knowledge that had accompanied him since birth. “I’m the only one who has to leave.”

His mother’s slim jaw tightened; Adrian was expecting an argument, but not the words that came next, as her expression suddenly softened to something much more distant and thoughtful.

“ _Trevor_ Belmont. A boy your age?” she said, then quirked her lips upward and lightly touched Adrian’s arm, her eyes sparkling the way they always did when she was teasing him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. A _man_ about your age, maybe a couple years older. He’d be 24 or 25 by now, I think.”

“I didn’t ask Hector to check his ID,” Adrian said, surprised to find his mouth curving in matching amusement. He hadn’t caught much more than the basics: tall, slightly shaggy dark hair, broad shoulders and a clearly athletic build. Muscles that were built more for speed than pure strength, with an odd grace to his movements. If he’d been anyone other than a Belmont, Adrian might’ve considered him attractive. “He had some scruff, but he looked young. Early 20s.”

“Hmm,” his mother said, then, “I’ll need to make a few phone calls. Your father, first. And you should stay inside for the rest of today, just in case. But if Trevor’s the boy I’m thinking of...I wouldn’t worry too much, sweetheart. His presence here shouldn’t be an issue, at least not in the way you’re thinking.”

Adrian had spent the first twelve years of his life convinced his mother was the smartest person on the planet, then the next ten hiding that belief, after learning from sneering classmates that “mama’s boy” was a far too exploitable weakness. If Lisa Ţepeş said there was nothing to fear from this Belmont, she had a reason. Still, he hesitated, unable to shut off smoke-tinged memories of fire and flight, or the fresh sense of danger thrumming through his veins.

_Trevor_. Adrian had only ever known one person by that name, and he didn’t particularly like the curmudgeonly old man who wielded it. Trevor Belmont, no matter what Adrian’s mother was thinking, had to be significantly worse.


	2. Chapter 2

“So he’s an old family friend?” Hector didn’t sound terribly interested; most of his attention was focused on a stray dog he’d spent the last week attempting to befriend. It was flea-bitten and half-starved, missing one ear and most of its fur, and Hector clearly believed it was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

“Our families have known each other for a while,” Adrian said, leaving out the centuries of mutual bloodshed.

Hector shot him a surprisingly shrewd glance. “Does Trevor know about your connection?”

Adrian touched his finger to a blade of grass, waiting until the ladybug perched on its tip made the transition to his fingernail, then took flight, startled by Hector tossing another tempting scrap of food to the stray. The dog was still trembling with fear and suspicion but had spent the last hour inching closer—occasionally darting in to snatch a morsel of chicken, then retreating across the field to gulp it down in safety. Hector was patient; Adrian had the day off work, and nowhere pressing to be.

“I’d rather Belmont wasn’t made aware,” he said. Unsurprisingly, Hector didn’t push further.

The Belmont had been in town for a month, and just as Adrian’s mother had predicted, he seemed to have very little interest in them or their bookstore.

Gossip spread quickly; within a week, without specifically asking anyone for details, Adrian knew as much as anyone about their new neighbor. Twenty-four years old, romantically unattached, estranged from his family, although his landlady had overheard a few phone calls through their thin walls that put a question mark on that point.

 _You can disagree with your family and still speak with them_ , Adrian’s mother had said, waving aside Adrian’s fresh surge of distrust.

No one knew why the Belmont had chosen their town; when asked, he typically shrugged, said, “There was a job opening,” and changed the subject. He spent most of his downtime either hiking through the woods on his own or drinking in the local pub, and despite his widely admired level of physical fitness, he seemed entirely incapable of cooking for himself.

He was generally well-liked, although no one had gotten past surface-level pleasantries. Several of the women in town, Sypha included, had attempted to try for something deeper—fresh blood was a novelty, and the Belmont was undeniably handsome—but he appeared to be either uninterested or completely oblivious to the attention he’d been attracting.

Adrian dug his fingers into the warm, rich earth and watched as the stray crept within arm’s length. It was terrified, unwilling to be touched, but craving something more than the tormented, lonely life it’d been living.

Hector crooned to it softly, a steady stream of encouragement and affection pulling it ever closer, until it stretched its skinny neck out as far as it could reach, touched its nose to Hector’s fingers, then bolted for the undergrowth, its ragged tail tucked between its legs.

“Tomorrow,” Hector said, with a smile that’d been known to charm the birds off their branches. “He’ll let me pet him tomorrow.”

***

It took two more days for Hector to tame the ragged beast, and another month for the Belmont to walk through the doors of the town’s only bookstore.

“Sorry, we’re closed,” Adrian said when the bell at the entrance tinkled. Busy balancing the cash register, he didn’t bother to look up; it was one of his least favorite tasks, and it required all of his concentration.

They were a dollar short. He sighed and pushed a sheet of hair out of his face, wondering whether it was worth it to count again. He didn’t think he’d lost track, but it was possible his attention had wandered while he was stacking quarters.

His stomach grumbling made the decision for him; he’d been on his feet all day and was well overdue for a very large glass of wine and some quick-to-reheat pasta. It only took a few more minutes to finish out the cash report, staple the day’s receipts, replace the cash-on-hand, and transfer the rest to the safe for the morning’s bank run.

“Do you always do this with the doors unlocked?” a gruffly attractive voice asked as Adrian was shutting the safe door and spinning the dial.

Adrian didn’t startle, but it was a close call. He straightened up, coming face-to-face with the man he’d been able to, intentionally or not, avoid for sixty-five days. Unlike the contents of the register, this was a count he’d been quite certain of.

“We’re closed,” he said again, rather inanely. He was more thrown than he should have been by the fact that he hadn’t _heard_ the Belmont: his footsteps, the rustling of his clothes, the sound of his breathing. An ordinary human, wrapped in his own thoughts, might not have been able to pick out anything quieter than heavy boots on tile, but Adrian had inherited his father’s heightened senses. He’d never encountered anything like this before: a man who, despite his bulk, could move swiftly and noiselessly enough to surprise a vampire.

If that bit of mythology was true, then everything else he’d heard about the Belmonts must be, as well. It was a thought that momentarily froze Adrian in his tracks, his heart surging with gratitude that his mother, at least, was across town, and safe from whatever would come next.

He instinctively scanned for weapons, his gaze flicking rapidly down the length of the Belmont’s body. A sleeveless tank top—useful for the still-sweltering August heat, if not for easy concealment of whips and blades. Black jeans, ripped at the knees and along one thigh, and too tight to be hiding anything unexpected. Sturdy boots—potential there for knives, but requiring too much movement to easily retrieve. Even a Belmont’s speed wouldn’t be able to match Adrian’s, now that he knew what to expect.

When he looked back up to the Belmont’s face, he found a hint of a smile playing over rather nicely shaped lips, and startlingly blue eyes that were fixed on his.

“You could at least buy me a drink first,” the man drawled, with a smirk that transformed any of Adrian’s lingering dread into irritation.

“You’ve _been_ drinking,” Adrian said, that sense kicking in now, a little belatedly. The Belmont didn’t reek of alcohol and was certainly clear-eyed and steady enough on his feet, but there was a sharp tang of beer on his breath, the scent mixing with the light sheen of sweat along his collarbones. The combination was a little musky and less unpleasant than Adrian might’ve expected.

“Mm,” the Belmont said. “True, most nights. They have shit food, though. I got hungry.”

Adrian couldn’t help arching an eyebrow. “So you came to a bookstore.”

“Wrong door,” the Belmont said easily. “Not my fault it was unlocked.”

“The lights were off,” Adrian snapped back, realizing his mistake even as he said it.

Humans didn’t work in the dark, needing only the faint shine of moonlight to see their way. Humans didn’t leave doors unlocked while counting their cash, too confident in their strength and enhanced senses to be wary of thieves. Humans didn’t have mouths that, even without the telltale fangs, were filled with teeth that were too blindingly white, too perfectly aligned, too similar to those in skulls that every Belmont child grew up studying—part of a curriculum that taught them to fear, and hate, and hunt.

And the Belmont’s intent gaze had, predictably, drifted to Adrian’s mouth.

Too late, Adrian thought, pressing his lips closed anyway.

“I should go,” the Belmont said after a few tense moments, jerking his thumb in the direction of Harriet’s, which was still open, but with its activity levels winding down for the evening. “Are you—I mean, if you’re done here—”

Adrian repressed his surprise and haughtily lifted his chin, pleased he had an inch or two on the Belmont. “You’ll find the door to the cafe on your left as you exit my store. I presume you’re not drunk enough to miss it a second time.”

“Right,” the Belmont said, with an oddly disappointed dip in his voice. “I’ll just, uh. Grab some dinner by myself, then.” He retreated, as silently as he’d come, then turned back for a final volley, holding the still-unlocked door open with a well-toned arm.

“Sleep well, Fangs,” he said, letting the door swing shut behind him, leaving Adrian alone in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

He came back frequently after that. Not as often as their regulars, but at least twice a week, Adrian could be sure to hear the bell chiming, accompanied by almost imperceptibly light footsteps that signaled the Belmont’s arrival.

He usually spent under twenty minutes in the store, picking up objects without really looking at them, and never making any purchases. That in itself wasn’t unusual, or any cause for concern. Adrian and his mother had a policy of not harassing their customers; books were a personal matter, and help would only be offered if it was requested. Visitors were welcome to simply browse, or to stand by the fan for a few minutes to escape the heat shimmering off the pavement.

Business was slow in a town like this, where most of the population had little time or inclination to read anything longer than the morning’s headlines, or the blurb on the back of a DVD case. Their one-room library’s collection was thin, mostly composed of media and of children’s books that had been mended so many times, their spines were more tape than original board.

It wasn’t strange, then, for someone to pick up, then almost immediately set down, five paperbacks from the sale table, or to absently sort through an entire mug of pens without planning to buy any, as the Belmont was doing now, with fingers that were far more nimble and dexterous than one might have expected from the size of his hands.

Adrian watched silently, his open book lying forgotten on the counter in front of him. It was a peaceful afternoon; there were a couple children pulling picture books off shelves, which he’d need to re-alphabetize later, and Old Man Williams had parked himself in his usual overstuffed armchair, ready to spend the next two hours reading a book he had no intention of buying.

Adrian’s mother had gone to lunch, leaving him in charge, which left the store even quieter. She enjoyed chatting with customers, and usually helped to fill the space with light, interesting conversation; she’d even exchanged pleasantries with the Belmont a few times, then laughed kindly after he’d gone his way.

 _I’d never expected to meet a shy Belmont_ , she’d told Adrian the first time, when the man in question had dropped a rather expensive hardback and nearly bolted at her friendly hello.

Shy wasn’t the correct term for it; Adrian had experienced the man’s self-assured cockiness firsthand, although he had, for some reason, kept that encounter to himself. But the Belmont _was_ quiet, and largely content to keep his own company.

Adrian enjoyed talking with people, too, when there was something worth saying, but unlike his actively sociable mother, he rarely made the first move. He couldn’t exactly explain what pulled him from his chair, what made him cross the room to stand beside the Belmont, who smelled today of coffee, toothpaste, and fresh-cut grass. There were blades, pale green and a more brittle yellow, still plastered to the sides of his work boots, which he hadn’t scraped carefully enough at the door, and rings of dirt that he hadn’t fully scrubbed away from the base of his fingernails.

It’d be his lunch break, too, Adrian thought, likely to be a short one; they were coming up on fire season, and the department was beginning its preventative measures. Running drills and repairing equipment, but also mowing overgrown fields, clearing out dry brush, and cutting fire breaks below the kindling-prone hills.

Adrian had no reason to talk to him. But for some reason, he wanted to.

“Those are on clearance; three for two dollars,” Adrian said, unable to keep himself from grinning sharply when the Belmont jumped.

“Fuck,” he groused, straightening the mug’s spilled contents before turning to face Adrian. “That’s creepy as hell, I can’t hear a goddamn thing when you move. Do your feet even touch the floor, or did you just fucking teleport over here?”

A few weeks ago, that kind of question would’ve set Adrian’s heart racing in his chest. The Belmont quite clearly knew what he was; strangely, it didn’t make him treat Adrian differently from anyone else in the town. Adrian didn’t understand, but he had accepted it.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Adrian asked.

The Belmont’s eyes caught his, as scorching as the cloudless, midday sky. Adrian’s skin didn’t sizzle in daylight; unlike his father, he could move through night and noon with equal ease. He shivered now, wondering if this was how it felt.

“Yes,” the Belmont said, still staring directly at Adrian. Then, unexpectedly, his cheeks darkened with a fresh rush of blood to the surface. Adrian’s mouth parted slightly at the sensation, so sudden and so near; he could feel its warm, vital pulse under the tan skin.

“Fuck,” the Belmont said again, raggedly this time, almost under his breath. “I have to—god _fucking_ dammit.” He took two steps back, then was gone almost before Adrian could blink.

***

Sales were decent enough to keep the store afloat, and thanks to his father’s regular trips abroad, it’d been years since their family had felt the pinch of an empty wallet. Adrian had never asked what filled the Ţepeş bank accounts and suspected he didn’t want to know. His mother looked worried, sometimes, when the months stretched out too long, when Vlad returned with an added vigor to his steps and an almost warm flush of color beneath his abnormally pale skin.

Adrian had grown up knowing that his parents loved each other with a fierce, boundless devotion anchored in a bedrock of mutual respect. Vlad fairly worshipped Lisa, and she, in turn, looked at him like he was more bright and beautiful than anything in the star-studded heavens. Adrian had fallen asleep, night after night, to the murmur of their voices as they spoke of their love for each other, and of the world around them—filled with knowledge they wished to spend all their days seeking, together.

The thought of them voluntarily parting ways had never once entered Adrian’s mind. Yet, whether because of his father’s frequent absences or the ever-pressing realities of a world that loathed half of him, he’d always been much closer to his human mother than his vampire father.

Adrian didn’t like taking his father’s money. The bookstore was more of a hobby than a strict necessity, but it was, nonetheless, an independent source of income. He’d spent much of the past year stretching his limited business sense to discover ways to increase their cash flow.

“We have too much stock we can’t move,” he said, pointing out the columns he’d highlighted. “We’ve had some of these for more than eighteen months now, mother. At this point, all they’re doing is taking up space that we could use for other merchandise. Items that might actually catch people’s attention.”

Unfortunately, they both knew this likely meant replacing some of their books with another table of gifts and novelty items. They had a few of those products now: stationery, mostly, with some local jams and jewelry. Adrian had pushed, six months prior, for a small garden section in the front window, framed by corresponding books. The books occasionally sold. The succulents, orchids, gardening gloves, brightly colored watering cans, and overpriced vases nearly always did.

His mother flattened her lips in that way that usually signaled she was gearing up for a spirited debate with her husband. Vlad rarely stood a chance against her, which meant that Adrian was, as the uncivilized Belmont might say, shit out of luck.

“I understand,” she eventually said, instead. The kindness in her eyes said more: that she understood not only Adrian’s proposed business plan but at least some of _why_ he was trying to exist independently, to make more of his own choices.

“Then you agree?” he asked, relieved.

He’d relaxed too quickly; his mother hadn’t given as much ground as he’d thought.

“What about this,” she proposed, affectionately bumping her shoulder against his, their long blond hair mingling as she reached for her tablet and flipped it to a new page.

While she sketched her idea, Adrian shifted his weight, a light sway of his body moving in time with the thoughts he was filtering through. As usual, there was no rush of customers to the counter where they were standing together. The last sale they’d made had been two hours prior, when Veronica asked for help picking out books for her niece.

Those books still sold well enough; children would probably always like reading. Teenagers, too, could be surprisingly free with their pocket change—or their parents’ credit cards. The adult stock was more difficult, particularly with certain genres. People tended to buy what they already knew or had heard of. If something hadn’t made it to the national bestseller level, or wasn’t included in either viral lists or word-of-mouth recommendations, it usually sat, untouched and unwanted, for months.

Adrian wasn’t sure what other options were feasible. They couldn’t discount their merchandise much more than they already had; as it was, they were taking a loss on some products. And even if they slashed the prices to absurd levels, would they sell? Wouldn’t that backfire by making the rest of their stock appear wildly overpriced?

“Here, take a look,” his mother said, capping her pen and tucking it behind her ear.

Across the top of the page, she’d written, “Blind Date with a Book.” Below that was a quick sketch of a tiered display shelf, with scribbled notes and lopsided hearts on the front of paper-wrapped volumes.

“I’ve seen this work before,” she said. “People like surprises.”

Adrian made a mild noise in the back of his throat, and she pushed playfully at his arm.

“People _other than you_ enjoy having decisions made for them. It simplifies things. They won’t be asked to judge the cover art or read more than a few lines of a description. We’ve done the work for them; all they need to do is give us money and take it home.”

“You make the transaction sound sordid,” Adrian said, which wasn’t strictly an objection.

This process would never work on him; he wanted to touch the pages for himself, reading passages and feeling the spark igniting between him and an author’s work. For the general public, the ones they needed to bring into their store...he had to admit the idea held promise.

“Let’s at least try it,” his mother said, sensing she’d already won.


	4. Chapter 4

Adrian was, he knew, a little bit of a snob. It wasn’t an ideal quality for a bookstore owner. Probably for anyone: he was aware from his time at university that it was uncouth to judge others for their taste in literature, or their reading habits. Still, sometimes he couldn’t help it.

The first set of blind-wrapped books sold out in three days. Adrian’s mother was right, as usual; people found it easier to spend money when they had fewer opportunities to talk themselves out of a decision. It didn’t matter, really, whether anyone read the books, or actually liked what was inside once they pulled off the enticingly attractive packaging.

Brightly colored wrapping worked better than plain brown paper, regardless of how cleverly Adrian described the contents, or how witty his mother’s puns were. Bows sold more quickly than curled ribbons. Larger books—the higher-priced hardbacks that took up crucial shelf space and usually intimidated indecisive customers—were more appealing to buyers who were now operating entirely on perceived worth. Size, as it turned out, really did matter to most people.

“Is there any point in signing these? There are only two of us, and I doubt anyone particularly cares whose name is attached,” Adrian said as he finished the first bookplate for their next batch. He’d kept it simple, cheating quite heavily with both the lowercase print and the text itself, but knowing it was unlikely anyone would guess he was shamelessly bastardizing one of the poems inside.

 _carry this book with you (carry it in your heart)_  
_i am never without it (anywhere it goes i go, my dear)  
_ _-adrian_

His mother glanced at what he’d written, then laughed, as he’d expected. “As recommendations go, I can’t fault that,” she said. “Although is it still true? I haven’t seen you read e.e. cummings in years.”

“Inept professors can ruin even the best poets,” he said, neatly tying off a bit of yellow ribbon, then curling it with the edge of his thumbnail. “But you’re one to talk; you hate Steinbeck.”

“Fiction doesn’t count as lying,” she replied smoothly. Nevertheless, she frowned down at her short, entirely insincere review of _The Red Pony_ , and the _Lisa_ she’d written below it. “I have another idea, then.”

Their laughter must’ve woken Vlad; the sun had barely sunk behind the hills when he came upstairs to join them at the dining table.

“What’s this?” he asked, kissing his wife in greeting, then turning his attention to the stacks of books, riotously colorful tangle of wrapping paper and ribbons, and half-empty bottle of syrah.

Once they’d explained, Vlad chuckled and sifted through the books to find one that interested him. The rest of the evening was, despite the generously portioned wine and some of his father’s bawdier jokes, so reminiscent of Adrian’s brightest childhood memories that his chest fairly ached with it. They hadn’t truly been like this—a family—in longer than he’d realized.

“ _Jane Eyre_ ,” Vlad announced near the end of the night.

“Rochester’s first wife,” Adrian and his mother said in unison, then laughed and clinked their glasses together.

“Hm,” Vlad said, scribbling for a few moments. When he was finished, he wrapped the book, attaching two very large bows and signing the note with a flourish. “Enclosed,” he read aloud, “a not-so-brief history of my husband’s infidelity and a gloomy governess’s obsession with him. The bastard deserved to lose far more than his eyes.”

The name at the bottom of the recommendation— _the “madwoman” in the attic_ —would probably do as little to sell the book as the description itself, but Adrian couldn’t argue with its accuracy.

“I think that’s the last of them,” he said, tipping the final drops of wine into his mouth and feeling a slight buzz from the alcohol before his metabolism burned it away.

His mother, red-cheeked and glowing, wasn’t quite as fortunate. Or perhaps, Adrian thought as he caught the look his parents were giving each other, the one that usually meant he needed to change rooms as quickly as possible—she’d always been the lucky one.

What was it like, Adrian mused as he walked home alone, to be free from inhibitions? To know exactly who you were, and how you wanted to live your life—to not spend huge portions of every day remembering to hide aspects of your nature, things you’d never chosen to be born with.

His father was lucky, too, although it was even more difficult for Adrian to process that churn of emotions. It was pointless to indulge in any surge of envy, to wonder how it might feel to be cherished by someone who knew everything about him.

Someone like Lisa Ţepeş was more precious and infinitely more rare than the vampire she’d married. There weren’t many people in the world who could march through the front gates of Dracula’s castle and spend the rest of their life simply calling its inhabitant _Vlad_.

Or, during intimate moments that Adrian wasn’t meant to hear, _my love_.

There was a whisper of noise to Adrian’s left, something that didn’t quite fit with the night’s familiar sounds; he whirled toward it, whipping his hair out of his face so he could see more clearly.

“It’s just me,” the Belmont said, slinking out of the shadows between two houses.

One of them was Margaret’s cottage, with an attic room that’d been rented to their newest resident, Adrian realized. His tense muscles loosened. The Belmont wasn’t skulking, then. Adrian had simply been too caught up in his thoughts to notice the route he’d taken.

“Are those for your store?” the Belmont asked, dropping a bottle into the bin by the fence. He didn’t wait for an answer, or for the clinking of glass to subside as the bin’s contents shifted; he vaulted lightly over the gate and fell into stride beside Adrian.

“Is the latch broken?” Adrian asked, refusing to acknowledge the strange sensation that’d fizzed through his veins at that effortless display of athleticism. Perhaps the wine was affecting him more than he’d realized.

“Too lazy to grope for it in the dark,” the Belmont said. He glanced at the windows of the surrounding houses—mostly curtained off at this hour, with some emitting the fluctuating blue light of television or computer screens—and lowered his voice, moving his face closer to Adrian’s, his beer-scented breath stirring Adrian’s hair. “You should let me carry one of those.”

Adrian barely noticed the change in weight as the Belmont lifted away the uppermost of the three large boxes he was holding. And that was the point, Adrian realized, dropping his arms more, as though the burden was testing the edge of his strength.

“Better,” the Belmont said, grinning at him. “You’re lucky no else is stupid enough to be wandering the streets this late.” He grunted a little as he adjusted his grip on the cardboard, his broad palms wrapping more securely around its bulging corners. “Shit, what’s in this, anyway. Are you a bricklayer now?”

“Still a bookseller,” Adrian said, doing his best to sound distant and, hopefully, the slightest bit condescending. The street lamps were spaced too far apart in this residential stretch; the Belmont wouldn’t be able to see the smile tipping up the corners of Adrian’s mouth.

“Just as bad,” the Belmont replied, either not picking up on Adrian’s cool tone or not caring. “So what kind of books? And why the special 2 AM delivery? Is this the secret backroom smut no one told me about?” He shifted the box’s weight again, propping it against one arm, his muscles bunching to hold it steady as he attempted to pry the folded top open with his free hand.

Adrian made a sharp, discouraging noise with his tongue; the Belmont, surprisingly, stopped rummaging inside.

“Would you actually buy them if they were porn?” Adrian asked half a block later, when the silence started to feel louder than their conversation.

The Belmont barked out a laugh; it echoed along the quiet streets, but no lights flicked on empty porches in response. “Probably not. The internet’s free.”

“I’m afraid to imagine your search history,” Adrian said dryly, although the images had already begun to cluster in his mind, unbidden and as predictable as most men’s taste. Women with slim waists and large breasts that would fit perfectly in those rough palms. Blonde, he thought, then shook his head slightly in discomfort and shaded her hair to a rich chestnut brown. Wide childbearing hips—the Belmonts had a passion for creating more of their kind, as some sort of primitively competitive response to the lies they spread about rampant vampire siring—and the stamina to keep up with this particular Belmont both in bed and in battle.

Adrian’s lips curled in disgust, something dark and irrational taking hold of him, and he sped up until the Belmont had to visibly lengthen his strides to stay by Adrian’s side.

“I think you’d be surprised,” the Belmont said, quietly, but saved the rest of his breath for the last stretch of their journey.

“You didn’t have to walk all this way,” Adrian said once they’d reached the darkened storefront. Enough of his anger had burned off for it to shade into embarrassment. He didn’t understand why the Belmont had accompanied him, but it’d admittedly been nice to have company.

“Not much else to do,” the Belmont said, still not setting the box down. He meant to bring it inside, then.

Adrian hesitated before fitting the key into the lock, wondering if he was being foolish. But there was no reason to believe the Belmont would be any more likely to attack him here, in Adrian’s home, where he’d have the advantage.

“You can set it by the display,” Adrian said, following his own instructions. He considered, briefly, whether to begin arranging the materials, but his thoughts turned longingly to his bed upstairs, and to the freshly-washed sheets he had yet to retrieve from his dryer. He could deal with the books in the morning.

The Belmont had shoved his hands in his back pockets, his tanned shoulders taut with restrained power, and was standing in front of the empty shelves, reading the sign.

“Blind dates,” he said after a moment, flicking a quick glance at Adrian, then away. “That’s what the books are for?”

“It’s something new we’re trying,” Adrian said. The Belmont hadn’t come by in a few days; perhaps he’d grown tired of fondling their merchandise. That was the only response needed, but Adrian’s mouth went on without heeding his brain. “If you’re interested, I’ll have some of them out tomorrow. You can see if there’s anything you like.”

The Belmont darted another quick, almost shy look at him. “Yeah? I might do that,” he said, while Adrian was still puzzling over the absurdity of attaching a word like that to this man.

Adrian waited for a few beats; the Belmont didn’t seem like he was planning to move. “Thank you for the help,” he said, injecting a strong hint into the words and wondering what would happen if he physically pushed the Belmont to the door.

There was no opportunity to find out; the Belmont shook off whatever reverie he’d been caught in. “You’re not going home?” he asked. “I thought I’d walk you there.”

“Why?” Adrian said, not sure if he was more amused at the thought of a hunter gallantly escorting a vampire to his door, or at the realization that the Belmont had no idea he’d already done so. “It’s not as though I need protection.”

The Belmont’s eyes seemed bluer, somehow, at night, like the combustion point at the heart of a flame. “I know that,” he said, his voice strangely soft. “I just thought...well, nevermind. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Oddly, it sounded like a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adrian's recommendation is heavily referencing [[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in) by e.e. cummings.


	5. Chapter 5

“Are you expecting someone?” Adrian’s mother asked, after the twentieth time the bell had jerked Adrian’s attention to the door.

Not that he’d been counting.

The need to man the register saved him from a reply; their store had been encouragingly busy all morning, a few steps above a usual Saturday.

“I think you’ll enjoy this one,” he told Mary Grace, grateful that he actually meant it. There’d been plenty of mismatches thus far, and it was a relief to not have to fake his well-wishes. She’d chosen _Great Expectations_ , with a slightly misleading wedding-themed note from Miss Havisham, as her blind date, and had picked another paperback off the new releases table on her way up to the counter.

That was the true brilliance of this idea: people seemed to prefer buying books in batches, as though each volume needed at least one more to keep it company on the ride home.

“It sounded interesting,” Mary Grace said, tangling her fingers in her dark curls as he rang her up, and giving him a bashful smile. “It’s Dickens, isn’t it? I haven’t read it before, but I recognized the name.”

Adrian smiled back. “When you finish, you should come by and tell me what you think. I can recommend some others if you like it.”

Mary Grace turned a little pink. “Definitely,” she breathed. “I’d...I’d really like that, Adrian.”

“She likes _you_ ,” Adrian’s mother murmured as soon as the girl was out of earshot.

Adrian turned an icy glare in her direction. “She’s nineteen.”

“And you’re twenty-two,” his mother laughed. “I know I’ve always called you an old soul, but that doesn’t actually make you one.”

“I’m not interested,” he said, shortly, and his mother relented with an apologetic touch to his shoulder.

“I know; I’m not trying to matchmake. I just want to be sure you’re aware of your options, sweetheart. Sometimes I don’t think you notice when people are...” She quirked her lips, then finished in a much more mischievous tone, “ _Putting the moves_ on you.”

“ _Mother_ ,” he protested. He glanced toward the jangling door—Leroy, hobbling through with a hooked cane and the hound dog he’d been frequently told to leave outside—and sighed. “It’s not that I’m unaware. You know it’s complicated.”

“I do,” she said. “I also know how rewarding it can be when you give something unexpected a chance.”

Adrian thumbed absently at the thick, ropy scar above his heart. “Do you ever wonder,” he asked quietly, “if instead of Father—”

The bell dinged violently, the hound bayed, and the Belmont swept through the entrance in a smoke-tinged rush of air, nearly tripping over the furry hazard that’d flopped directly in his path. Only the usual lightness of his tread saved him; he spun neatly to the side, then crouched down to scratch behind the dog’s long ears.

The dog, of course, attempted to bite him, and the Belmont prudently removed the temptation of his fingers.

“I’ll take care of the beast,” Adrian’s mother said, giving his arm a light squeeze that meant they’d resume their conversation later.

Adrian watched as she went to speak to Leroy first, firmly pointing him and his dog out the door, then stopped to exchange a few words with the far more welcoming Belmont. He ducked his head to listen to her, his posture relaxed and inviting, and chuckled at whatever she’d said. She reached up to pat his scruffy cheek before moving on to the next customer—a motherly gesture that seemed to catch the Belmont as much by surprise as it did Adrian.

His mother was friendly with everyone in town, but rarely affectionate. Adrian frowned, wondering, not for the first time, what it was that she saw in this Belmont.

She still hadn’t explained why she didn’t consider him a threat; _I’ll tell you when the time is right_ , she’d said, when Adrian had pressed too hard, frustrated by the unusual vagueness of her answers. _Just trust me, sweetheart. He’s not here to hurt you._

That left too many possibilities open for what he _was_ there to do. Currently, he was examining the Blind Date display, looking more confused by the minute. He picked up one of the books, checked the back, and replaced it on the shelf when he discovered there were no further clues to its contents.

He finally straightened his shoulders, nodded a little to himself as though he was working up to something difficult, and approached the register, empty-handed.

“Good morning,” Adrian said, then, with a little more sharpness than was reasonable, “or should I say good afternoon.”

The Belmont grimaced. “I meant to be here hours ago,” he said, scrubbing his palm over the back of his head, which kicked up a stronger scent of ash-laden smoke. “Got called in not too long after I’d finally rolled into the sack. Buncha out-of-town assholes were having a camping sexcapade in the woods, and they weren’t paying attention to where they built their fire. It caught some dry brush, and licked into a few trees before one of the girls panicked and phoned for help.”

“Is everyone okay?” Adrian asked, letting go of whatever strange sense of disappointment he’d spent the morning clinging to.

“Yeah,” the Belmont said after a pause, sounding surprised by the question. By the idea of a vampire caring about human lives, Adrian thought sourly, and perhaps a little unfairly. “Yeah, we’re all fine. The shithead fire-starters, too, even the little pantsless bitch who fell halfway down the nearest fucking hill when he heard us coming.”

Adrian laughed, despite himself. “I’m not sure you’re supposed to say that sort of thing to the general public.”

“No,” the Belmont agreed, taking a quick survey of their surroundings to see if anyone else was close enough to overhear. “But you’re not exactly...” He trailed off, leaving Adrian to finish the rest of that statement for himself.

Rather than letting his imagination take him down dangerous paths, Adrian gave the Belmont’s attire a pointed once-over. He’d stripped off his jacket at some point but was still wearing the lurid orange fire retardant pants, with wide reflective strips wrapped around the ankles and red suspenders stretching over a tight, sweat-stained undershirt.

“As flattered as I am by your interest in our blind dates,” Adrian said, “firefighting—and bathing—takes a slightly higher priority. Trust me, in this town, you won’t miss much by waiting a few extra hours.”

The Belmont didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m not too late?” he asked, sounding strangely hopeful, leaning partway over the counter, a little farther into Adrian’s space than he was usually comfortable allowing. “The rest of the guys are mopping up, making sure nothing’s still smoldering, but I asked the Captain if I could...I was afraid I’d lose my chance, if I wasn’t here first thing.”

“A few of the dates sold,” Adrian said, not certain when the Belmont had gotten this attached to books, “but there are plenty left. You were browsing through them a minute ago; you didn’t see anything you liked?”

“I wasn’t sure,” the Belmont said, looking embarrassed. “Look, I know it’s stupid to ask you at this point, and it probably makes me sound like a real fucking idiot, but we’ve never actually...can you tell me your name?”

Adrian blinked, surprised by the change in topic, and by the strange curl of displeasure at the notion that in a town this small and prone to gossip, the Belmont had never even bothered to learn his name. “Adrian,” he said.

The Belmont flashed him a sudden, bright smile. “Adrian. Okay. I’m Trevor, by the way.”

“I know,” Adrian said.

The Belmont ruffled his unkempt hair again, still grinning, a little sheepishly. “Okay,” he repeated, pushing himself away from the counter. “I’m gonna go check, then. See if my luck still holds.”

A woman Adrian didn’t recognize was picking through the blind dates—judging from her crisp white shorts and designer sunglasses, she was probably a tourist, either passing through or staying a couple nights at the motel a few blocks from the shopping district. The Belmont didn’t shoulder her away from the display, but it was a close call; she startled at his looming shadow, then caught a glimpse of either his face or his uniform and patted at her sleek blonde hair instead, tilting an overtly flirtatious expression up at his six foot frame.

The Belmont simply pointed at the book she was holding; when she turned it in his direction, he shook his head and seemed to lose all interest in her.

Funny, Adrian thought, how he could turn the charm on and off that quickly.

The Belmont scanned the shelves rapidly, as if he was looking for something specific: a certain size or weight, maybe. Perhaps he intended to use it to prop open a door or stabilize some wobbly furniture. He eventually picked up one of the thinner books, then, while reading the note on the front, flushed a deep red, all the way down to his throat.

When he came back to the register, he barely seemed able to meet Adrian’s eyes.

“Oh,” Adrian said, surprised by the choice. It was the first book he’d wrapped the night prior, before they’d switched to recommendations from fictional characters. “Are you sure?” he asked. The Belmont hadn’t exactly struck him as someone who’d appreciate poetry, much less e.e. cummings.

The Belmont double-checked his bookplate, then nodded.

Their goal was to sell books—any books; _all_ their books, if possible. The entire point of the blind date system was to clear out as much of their dead stock as they could, regardless of whether the buyers would ultimately enjoy reading them. Adrian shouldn’t care whether this book ended up in a donation bin, or even a trash can. It wasn’t his responsibility to match the Belmont with something that fit him better, that might make him see the value of literature—the pleasure it could bring to his life, on an ongoing basis.

Adrian was a bookseller, though; that was why he cared. It was the only reason he wanted the Belmont to continue coming back for _more_ books, perhaps ones that Adrian could personally recommend once he understood the man’s taste a little better.

“There are a lot of options left,” he said. “I don’t presume to know exactly where your interests lie, but if you’d like, I can point you to some more appropriate pairings.”

The Belmont frowned, a deep furrow digging between his dark eyebrows. It made all the lines of his face harden, his powerful jaw, from bearded chin to high cheekbones, sharpening into an all-too-human representation of the blades that’d been used for centuries to cut down beings like Adrian. For the first time, he truly looked like the hunter whose name he bore.

Adrian watched as the lines smoothed out, as the shadows left the Belmont’s face, his sea-blue eyes taking on that earnest, almost _kind_ expression that had been present from the beginning—that Adrian hadn’t properly identified before.

“I’m not interested in anyone else,” the Belmont insisted, with a steady, strangely magnetic determination that made Adrian take him at his word.

The Belmont paid in cash, carefully unfolding bills from a worn leather wallet, his lips moving silently as he counted out the exact change. He turned down the offer of a bag but, as on the previous night, seemed rooted in place once the transaction was complete.

“What now?” he asked, as though he’d expected to be handed a guidebook to go along with his purchase.

Adrian lifted an eyebrow in question.

The Belmont held up the shiny, ribbon-covered package. “The blind date. With the book. The sign didn’t say what I’m supposed to do next.”

“You read the book,” Adrian said slowly, wondering if the Belmont was really that obtuse.

“Huh,” was the reply. “So...it starts right away?” He looked around the room, gaze sweeping through the familiar terrain, snagging briefly on the chairs that’d already been claimed by some of the store’s regulars. “At Harriet’s?” he asked, like he genuinely wanted Adrian to confirm the best location to dive into his new purchase.

Adrian couldn’t help taking pity on him—or poking fun at how seriously he was taking their signage. “It’s a good spot for a date,” he agreed, unable to keep his lips from pulling up at the corners. “A bit late in the afternoon for lunch, but I’ve always preferred that. At this hour, you should be able to stay for as long as you like.”

The Belmont’s smile really did transform his face. “You mean there isn’t a time limit,” he breathed, sounding the happiest Adrian had heard him yet. “I figured it’d just be a quick coffee or—that’s...oh shit, I should probably change, though.”

“I doubt anyone would mind,” Adrian said honestly, seeing how half the women in the shop were not-so-casually checking out the tall, soot-smudged fireman. He reached forward, tapping the book that the Belmont was still holding in front of him like a shield, or some sort of holy relic. “But I think your date could wait for you to shower off some of that smoke.”

“Right,” the Belmont said. “That’s a good idea. I’ll grab a table next door in...twenty minutes? No more than half an hour.”

“Okay,” Adrian said, not sure why the Belmont needed him to know.


	6. Chapter 6

Working in a bookstore was, for the most part, something Adrian enjoyed. He liked being able to pick out and attractively arrange merchandise that, even if it wasn’t something he personally resonated with, might appeal to others. You could learn a lot about people from the books they gravitated toward, or the graphic novel they might guiltily slip into a stack of 20th century canon-approved British literature.

Adrian liked books. Every genre, written in any language, from the dawn of civilization to the present day, although he was, of course, excessively picky about the authors who lined his own apartment’s shelves.

“I have found what you are like—the rain,” he murmured, thinking again of e.e. cummings, of the poems he used to drink in huge, greedy gulps, like they held the answers to all the world’s questions, if he could only let them sink far enough into his soul. “And the coolness of your smile is stirring of birds between my arms; but I should rather than anything have...”

Adrian sighed, remembering the rest of the verse, but also the red-scratched papers his professor handed back, the arguments about literary interpretation that a student was never allowed to win. The classmates he’d thought, for a time, had understood him.

He pressed his hand against the scar that stretched from sternum to navel, pretending the ache beneath it simply came from physical hunger.

He’d worked longer than he’d meant to, handling the register’s increased volume while his mother went home for a quick lunch. She’d offered to bring him something, and Adrian had shaken his head. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Nothing from her cabinets, or his. Maybe a salad: something simple and refreshing. She’d been back for some time now; he should ask Hector what the cafe was offering today.

“Take your time, sweetheart,” his mother said when he checked whether she needed anything. “You’ve been working hard all day; let me hold down the fort for a while.”

Adrian didn’t intend to take her up on the offer. He’d be fine with a few quick bites and something to drink, and he didn’t even need to leave the store for that. Days like this were when he took advantage of the window that linked them with Harriet’s—a chest-high rectangle that was exactly the right size for passing through a tray of food. A holdover, probably, from the days when both storefronts were under the same management. He slid the window open and waited a few moments to catch Hector’s attention.

“There you are,” Hector said, an unusual greeting, once he was close enough. He was shorter than Adrian, but still at a reasonable height to see comfortably through the window. He nevertheless broke tradition a second time by pushing himself up on his toes to prop his arms across the sill. “Did you know Trevor’s been here almost two hours?”

The cafe entrance, with its familiar view of two old men playing chess rather badly, was visible from this angle, but Hector was shaking his head when Adrian looked back at him.

“Not that one. The much younger, much more handsome, currently very grumpy one who told me, when I finally asked him if he was planning to order anything, that he’s been waiting for you.”

***

Adrian didn’t go inside Harriet’s right away. The Belmont was situated at a table in a prime location: out of the flow of traffic, where his tablemate’s conversation would be audible at a comfortable level, with ample leg room and a view of the green-wooded hills through a convenient gap between the buildings across the street. Claiming that particular table, and stubbornly camping out at it for two hours, would’ve made him more than a few enemies.

The most surprising part was that the Belmont had taken the seat that put his back to the door.

Adrian couldn’t understand why a man who had all of his ancient bloodline’s strength and agility bred into him, who must’ve been trained in their ways from birth, never acted like a hunter.

He didn’t even swing around to check the door when Adrian finally entered. Instead, he actually hunched a little more into the book he had open in front of him, digging both hands into his hair, as though he could pull either the dark strands themselves or some iota of poetic appreciation out by the roots.

“We do accept returns,” Adrian said, from over the Belmont’s shoulder. “At least, I’ll make an exception in this case. Torture wasn’t part of the bargain.”

The Belmont swore, let go of his hair, and greeted Adrian with narrowed eyes and a deep frown. “You could’ve fooled me. Do you actually read this shit?”

“I do,” Adrian said, taking the seat the Belmont had left open for him, with a padded cushion and a clear view of the cafe’s exit routes. “But I’ve always been drawn to poetry. For others, it can be more of an acquired taste. I did attempt to warn you.”

The Belmont’s mouth softened: not a frown anymore, but not a smile, either. “I was starting to think you’d changed your mind.”

Two hours, Adrian thought. Two hours doggedly attempting to read a book he hated, waiting for someone who was never going to arrive. “I don’t understand why you didn’t come get me,” he said. “I’ve been next door this entire time.”

“And you knew where I was,” the Belmont replied—a matter-of-fact statement, not an accusation. “I don’t think anyone’s memory could be that bad, especially yours. And I—” He sighed and scratched at the scruff along his jaw. “If you didn’t want to come, I wasn’t going to make you.”

“Even though you thought buying the book with my name on it guaranteed you a date with me,” Adrian said, having filled in the gaps, a bit belatedly. “Wouldn’t that be considered a breach of contract on my part, then?”

“I’d have to pay a fuckton more than twenty bucks if I thought I had a chance of buying _you_ ,” the Belmont said, meeting Adrian’s eyes with a clear-eyed, remarkably honest gaze. “Cards on the table, I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you for weeks. This seemed like a good opening. It didn’t mean you had to say yes.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Adrian said, and the Belmont finally smiled.

“I don’t understand the book part, though,” he admitted. “Are we supposed to read it together? If there’s gonna be a quiz, I have to tell you I don’t understand half the fucking words in this thing.”

“Only half?” Adrian said.

The Belmont snorted. “I should’ve known anything attached to you would be difficult.” He shut the book, stacking it with the phone he’d been using to prop it open, and pushed both to the side. “Hey, are you hungry? At least that’s something I know how to do.”

If he’d spent any time thinking about it, Adrian might’ve pictured the Belmont’s eating style as something akin to the barbarians in his father’s books—tearing flesh from bone with blunt teeth and bare fingers, heedless of his surroundings. In actuality, he wielded a knife and fork as capably, and with the same level of unaffected grace, as the rest of his movements.

He also managed to carry on a rather decent conversation.

Adrian found that he was enjoying himself far more than he should. Perhaps that was the Belmonts’ true danger—not mindlessly violent, classless brutes, but a wealthy, well-educated branch of aristocracy who’d amassed deep pools of knowledge from which to draw their cruelty.

This Belmont might not have been a poet, but he was by no means stupid. He’d read, and could intelligently discuss, far more than Adrian had given him credit for. He had a particular appreciation for nonfiction: history, some of the less dry biographies, and what Adrian would’ve generously termed pseudoscience.

“Don’t be a fucking snob,” Belmont said, neatly slicing through his last bite of sirloin, leaving a wet, red smear of its juices across his plate. “I know _Stiff_ isn’t exactly a medical textbook, but I’m not trying to be a doctor. I just like learning more about how things work.”

“Are you telling me _Bonk_ isn’t the reason you picked up her books to begin with?” Adrian asked, dragging his eyes back to his own salad, which he was still picking through. “You probably kept a copy under your mattress as a teenager.”

“Yeah? Well, I’d bet my sexual awakening came earlier than yours. And it wasn’t from any fucking book,” Belmont said, then grinned. “Just from the regular kind of fu—”

“Don’t be crass; we’re still in public,” Adrian said.

Belmont actually had the audacity to wink at him. “I’ll save it for later, then.” He casually dropped a napkin over his plate; it soaked up the remaining blood, turning the thin material a diluted pink.

Adrian hadn’t realized he’d been focused on it again. He set his fork down and picked up his glass instead, its contents cool, a little bubbly from the seltzer, and sufficiently distracting.

“Do you not eat red meat?” Belmont asked.

Adrian examined his companion’s expression as he drank. Curiosity. In search of more knowledge, as he’d said. Still no hint of a threat, overt or implied. He set down the sweating glass and lightly wiped his fingers on his napkin, folding it beside his plate. “Not around people.”

Belmont nodded, and let it go. “So you’ve been thinking all this time that I’m illiterate. I _did_ come into your store, before I knew you worked there.”

The implication—that he’d had a specific reason for returning all the other times—was something Adrian wasn’t yet ready to face head-on. “Blundering in after hours hardly counts. And on later occasions, all you did was touch everything and leave. Can you blame me for the assumption?”

“You need a used section, for one,” Belmont said. “Books are fucking expensive and lose 80% of their value the minute you walk out the door with them. It’s like buying a Bentley, except you’re supposed to collect a whole goddamn shelf of them.”

“A concept to which you object.”

“I brought some with me; I’ve been reading those,” Belmont said. “I don’t have a lot of room right now. Maybe if I can get settled more.”

“You’re planning to stay?” Adrian asked, wishing he didn’t care about the answer.

Belmont fiddled with his spare napkin. “I wasn’t, when I first got here. That’s why I just rented that shitty little—” He stopped, and unsubtly twisted to look behind him, apparently remembering where he was. He straightened back in his seat and lowered his voice slightly. “That’s why I went for just one room. Figured I’d stay a few months, maybe, through the bulk of fire season, until things started greening up again, then see what else was out there.”

“If job prospects aren’t a particular concern, then why did you choose this town to begin with? There must have been other openings.” Adrian knew he was asking too many questions; he fully expected Belmont to dodge this one, as he had with everyone else thus far.

“I don’t know,” Belmont said instead, after a long pause. “I’ve been bouncing around for the last few years. Restless, I guess. I kept heading in the same direction, like something was pulling me.” He dragged the collar of his dark work polo down a little, as if physically echoing the thought, then swept his thumb over the embroidered logo on the left side of his chest. “When I wound up here, it was like the tugging...it didn’t stop, exactly. It just felt different.”

Adrian flattened his hand against the tabletop, wincing through flashes of an old nightmare, images that hadn’t haunted him in years. An empty swing. A bonfire. A metal rod that glowed red, as though it’d sucked hellfire into its core. He didn’t know why they were coming back now, in broad daylight; maybe it was the scent of smoke that Belmont’s soap hadn’t quite scrubbed clear. Adrian had too many memories of fire. But maybe he hadn’t been the only one who’d spent much of his life running.

“Do you still feel it?” he asked, wondering what it would be like to run _toward_ something, rather than away.

Belmont looked up, his warm fingertips stretching out the few inches it took to touch Adrian’s. “I think so,” he said.

***

“I should tell you something,” Adrian said as they exited the cafe, another hour and a round of completely unnecessary desserts later. He wasn’t certain if he or Belmont had been drawing out their time together, trying to make something irrational— _impossible_ —last for a few moments longer.

Without discussing it, they turned left, leaving storefronts and prying eyes behind. There was a small pond less than half a mile away—in the height of summer, it turned into little more than a muddy patch of earth, but with autumn approaching, there might be some wildfowl present. Adrian had seen a lone heron there a few weeks ago, stabbing for frogs that had buried themselves in the rich, damp soil.

Belmont was warm and steady by his side; there was a relaxed alertness to him, like he was constantly aware of their surroundings, cataloguing the faintest of noises in the same way Adrian did, but likely for different reasons.

“If this is the vampire reveal, you’re a few months too late,” Belmont said.

Adrian laughed, ducking his head into it, his hair sweeping forward to cover his face. “No,” he said. “It’s about our store’s current promotion, which I believe you’ve fundamentally misunderstood.”

Belmont’s ability to laugh at himself was, Adrian thought, one of his favorite traits yet.

“You really must think I’m a fucking idiot,” he said, still chuckling, after Adrian was done explaining. “I must’ve looked like such an asshole just sitting there. I can’t believe the goddamn _book_ was my date.”

“It’s in the title,” Adrian pointed out. “The book was packaged for a blind purchase. You already know what I look like.”

“Yeah,” Belmont said, grinning at him. “So, the main thing I’m getting from this is that you thought I was both illiterate _and_ a complete dumbass, but you showed up anyway.”

“It was a public service,” Adrian said, trying to keep his lips from twitching up in response. “Hector told me you were beginning to scare away customers. It seemed the only solution was for the ‘blond bastard from the bookstore’ to make an appearance.”

Belmont grimaced. “I called you ‘the _pretty_ blond bastard from the bookstore.’ If he’s gonna quote me, he could at least do it right.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, pushing his shoulders toward his ears, and kept stealing glances at Adrian as they walked. “That was a date, though, wasn’t it?” he finally asked, sounding tentatively hopeful.

Adrian pushed the toe of his boot into the mud at the pond’s edge. It _was_ turning back into a bit more of a pond, although there was only one duck floating on the still-shallow surface, near the rushes on the far end. The ground squelched, and filled slowly with water.

He wasn’t stupid. He had sufficient experience with flirtation, and had no problem picking up on the many signals men sent out when they wanted a relationship with him, or something far more base. It didn’t make sense for Belmont to be interested in a vampire. But there was no denying that he was.

“If this is going to go any further,” Adrian said, turning to face him, “there are a few things we need to clear up.”

“Okay,” Belmont said.

“You know what I am.”

Belmont looked more amused than was appropriate for this turn in the conversation. “You try to keep your lips over your fangs, but your eyes are gold, Adrian. Last I checked, that’s not a regular human color. Then there’s the goddamn gorgeous rest of you. Do people around here just think you’re some kind of weird-ass supermodel?”

“Eccentric,” Adrian corrected. It was a term he’d heard more than a few times. “I look almost exactly like my mother, and my father only shows himself to people if he wishes. No one questions it, at least not in my presence.”

“So you’re a vampire.” Belmont shrugged and bent to pick a smooth stone out of the mud. He wiped it clean on his pants before flicking his wrist to send it in a graceful arc across the pond. He’d been careful, Adrian noticed, to aim far away from the drifting mallard.

“And you’re a Belmont. You don’t see how this might present a few problems?”

Belmont looked tired, suddenly, lines drawing tight at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “Neither of us can help how we were born. I carry the name, that’s all. I figure you already checked up on me, or your dad would’ve driven me out of town, or worse, a long time ago. Dracula’s not exactly known to be friendly to people like me.”

“You know who my father is,” Adrian said, surprised.

“I’ve met your mother,” Belmont reminded him. “You’re half human. There’s only one of you out there, as far as my family knows, and my family gets off on knowing every damn thing they possibly can. In my circles, you’re called Alucard.”

Dracula’s light-haired son, an abominable mix of human and vampire. A twisted perversion of the Belmonts’ oldest living adversary. It was the kindest of their names for him, Adrian was sure.

“I know much less about you, Belmont,” Adrian said. “My mother trusts you. That’s the most I’ve been told.”

“She’s been nice to me,” Belmont said. He picked in the dirt for another stone, huffing in frustration when he couldn’t seem to find one he liked. “Look,” he said abruptly, “can you not call me that?”

Adrian arched a brow at him.

“We can talk about my family, or yours, or we can just...” Belmont started to scrub his hand through his hair, recalling at the last second that his fingers were still muddy. He wiped it against the side of his pants, instead, a rough scrape of flesh against fabric, and sighed. “My name’s Trevor.”

They were quiet for a bit after that, neither of them particularly wanting to take the opening to discuss their backgrounds further. The mallard began diving for food, with an absurd but effective wiggle of tail feathers and webbed feet.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but Adrian was still grateful when it was broken. Not by him—he hadn’t known what to say.

“Adrian. Would you get a drink with me tomorrow, if I asked?”

Hopeful blue eyes, an honest mouth, dark hair that was lightly beaded with droplets from the drizzle that had just begun to ping across the pond’s surface. Not rain yet, but a tantalizing herald of an oncoming storm.

“I have found what you are like,” Adrian murmured, loudly enough to be heard, but only just. After a pause, breathing in the damp, earthy musk of air thick with promise for green, living things, he recited the final verse. This time, he enunciated it clearly, and pointedly. “I should rather than anything have...”

His companion, of course, had no idea what he was talking about, and said as much.

“You asked me a question,” Adrian replied. “That’s my answer. The rest is in the book you bought today and presumably spent much of the afternoon reading. If you like how the poem finishes, you know where to find me, Trevor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adrian is reciting, in slightly revised form, [i have found what you are like](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1586/i-have-found-what-you-are-like/), by e.e. cummings.


	7. Chapter 7

Adrian had finished closing up the store and was dropping a bag of trash into the back alley dumpster when he heard the barely audible crunch of boots on gravel. “It took you this long?” he said, waiting until the steps came closer, until a broad hand touched the narrow jut of his hip, where his shirt had ridden up slightly.

He tilted his head as Trevor swept his hair away from the side of his throat, replacing it with a warm mouth—an insistent, eager press of soft lips and rough stubble that made Adrian shut his eyes, trying not to let his breathing betray him.

“Couldn’t get off earlier,” Trevor said eventually, blunt teeth nipping at Adrian’s earlobe in response to his soft huff of laughter. “You know what I mean, you bastard. Had to make up for fucking off half a shift early yesterday.”

“I take it you read the poem,” Adrian said, turning so he could see Trevor’s face, starkly beautiful in the moonlight. The feeble glow of a distant street lamp barely touched them, but Trevor didn’t seem to have any trouble finding what he wanted. He brushed his thumb over Adrian’s lower lip, tugging it down until Adrian yielded, letting Trevor press his jaw open, then slot their mouths together.

“Took me until three in the fucking morning to find the goddamn thing,” Trevor grumbled, in between aggressively deep kisses that communicated the full weight of his pent-up desire. “I still don’t understand half of it.”

Judging from the way he was currently occupied in stroking Adrian’s tongue with his, he’d gotten the most important part of the message.

 _I should rather than anything have,_ Adrian thought, taking hold of Trevor’s jaw so he could better control the angle of their movements against one another, then breathed the rest against Trevor’s invitingly parted lips.

_Your kiss._

Adrian was careful with his teeth, at first, until he realized Trevor was as fearless—or reckless—here as he appeared otherwise. He merely withdrew enough to flick the tip of his tongue over Adrian’s fangs, testing their sharp points, then slid deeper, the sheer force of his bruising kisses pushing Adrian’s boots through the loose gravel, until his back thumped against the dumpster.

“This is disgusting,” Adrian said, several minutes after he should’ve expressed that view.

“Sorry,” Trevor panted, his pupils blown, his lips wet with either his saliva, or Adrian’s. “Too much tongue?”

“Your tongue in my mouth isn’t the issue,” Adrian said, making a futile attempt at straightening his clothing. “The literal garbage you’re smearing across my shirt, I could do without.”

Trevor laughed and took several steps backward, tugging Adrian with him as he scanned the area for a less rancid surface to grind against. Adrian was too preoccupied by the fact that Trevor _could_ lift him that easily, with only a loose grip of his hands on Adrian’s waist and barely a hint of strain, to object when he chose a location that was little better than the first. A red brick wall this time, next to the furniture store’s loading bay, and still far too close to the stench of meal scraps and soiled paper.

Adrian could dampen his senses when needed. He bent himself to the task, filtering out the objectionable scents and focusing instead what was much nearer. Spice-thick flavors still clung to the roof of Trevor’s mouth: once Adrian licked past the more recent toothpaste residue, he could taste cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, a smooth hit of honey—but not, to his amusement, any trace of garlic. Trevor was letting out quiet, guttural moans with each slight hitch of his hips against Adrian’s, as though he couldn’t help it, but was doing his best to muffle the noise.

There was a fever-hot richness to the blood pumping through Trevor’s veins, hardening the cock pushing against Adrian’s thigh. Adrian traced the tip of his nose against the pulse point under Trevor’s jaw, then let his mouth rest there for a moment, breathing it in.

“The poem made no promise of sex,” Adrian said, his lips moving against the salt-sweat of Trevor’s skin.

Trevor muttered something that wasn’t quite a word. Adrian heard it as a rumble of noise in his throat, some combination of acknowledgement and agreement.

It took a few seconds for Trevor’s brain to align with his body; he palmed the back of Adrian’s head so he could crush their lips together again, groaning into Adrian’s mouth as he deliberately, and with considerable effort, created space between their lower halves.

“I told you I didn’t understand it,” Trevor said once he had enough breath back in his lungs. He took a full step back, leaving them joined only by the hand that was still cradling the base of Adrian’s skull, keeping it from bumping against the rough red bricks. “The whole goddamn thing could’ve been about fucking, for all I knew.”

Adrian lifted himself away from the wall in an effortless, gravity-defying movement that made Trevor’s pulse kick into a new gear, beating so thickly, they must’ve both been able to feel it. “You wanted a drink,” Adrian reminded him, tracing languid fingers down the side of Trevor’s throat. He followed the enticing thump of Trevor’s heart to a point just under his left collarbone, where tanned skin transitioned to soft fabric. When he dipped the tips of his fingers under, tugging the shirt a little lower, he could see dark lines branching from what looked like an intricate tattoo.

Trevor’s response was, gratifyingly, much stronger than Adrian had anticipated; he inhaled sharply at the touch, his eyes widening and mouth parting. “Adrian,” he said, as though he was breathing out a prayer.

“We could go to your pub, if you like,” Adrian said. “Or we can take this upstairs, where I have more than sufficient alcohol.”

***

“So you live _in_ the bookstore,” Trevor said. “Guess that explains a lot.”

“I live in an apartment above it,” Adrian replied as he shrugged off his trash-stained shirt and replaced it with a lighter, loose-fitting v-neck.

Trevor gestured to the bookshelf-clogged walls, spinning in an exaggeratedly slow circle to get his point across. There were a few spots left for other things—a television, a couple framed pieces of art—but not many. “You live in a fucking bookstore, Adrian.”

“I’ll take your argument under consideration,” Adrian said easily. He retrieved two wide-bowled Bordeaux glasses and a corkscrew as Trevor kicked off his boots and settled onto Adrian’s couch as casually as if he’d been there a hundred times before. “Do you have a wine preference?”

“Leaving it in the bottle,” Trevor said, tilting his head over the back of the couch so he could see Adrian. “Shit, that’s all you have, isn’t it. Probably only reds, too. Just my bloody luck.”

“I have several varieties of white on hand,” Adrian retorted, his tone as sharp as Trevor’s grin. “Although...I mostly use them for cooking.”

Trevor laughed. “Give me whatever you’re drinking, Fangs. Wine’s just boiled grapes; it all tastes the same to me.”

Adrian, who’d never taken offense to Trevor’s occasional vampire quips, suddenly found a more substantial reason to regret inviting the Belmont into his home.

“And here I’d begun to think you were a man of at least some class,” he said, picking out a bottle of malbec after some consideration. While Trevor clearly had little to no understanding of wine, he’d be more likely to enjoy something a little fuller-bodied, with dark, spicy undertones.

“I’m a man of many flavors,” Trevor said, accepting the glass and sniffing at its inky contents suspiciously. “Wine just isn’t one of them.”

It wasn’t surprising, then, that he was far less interested in the drink he’d requested than in Adrian. The distance between them closed quickly; Adrian wondered, in a ludicrous flutter of imagination, whether the couch had begun to shrink while he wasn’t paying attention.

“Maybe this’ll make it taste better,” Trevor murmured into Adrian’s mouth, still rich and wet with the wine Adrian had just sipped from his glass.

 _Disgusting_ , Adrian thought again, as some of the wine slid past Trevor’s tongue and dribbled down their chins, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to consider the state of yet another ruined shirt.

“So sex isn’t on the table,” Trevor said eventually. His teeth were stained red with wine, his lower lip plump and full from the pressure of Adrian’s mouth.

“I didn’t say that,” Adrian said, kissing him again, growing hungrier with every taste. He reluctantly lifted himself away from the firm body sprawled across his couch, realizing that Trevor, perhaps, needed a little room to breathe. Trevor blinked up at him, the sweep of his dark eyelashes heavy and slow with pleasure.

Adrian touched the corner of Trevor’s mouth, the aristocratic bridge of his wine-flushed nose, the dark eyebrows that were pulled down in concentration, with more tenderness than he felt comfortable laying bare. “But I would prefer it on a bed, at least initially.”


	8. Chapter 8

Trevor removed his own clothes first, with almost disturbingly swift efficiency. By the time Adrian had finished dimming the lights and turning down his sheets—folding the bedspread and setting it aside, aware now of the dangers inherent in Trevor’s presence—Trevor was already down to his briefs. He kicked those to the side of the room and caged Adrian in with eager limbs, until Adrian’s back bounced against the plush mattress.

“You move quickly,” Adrian mused, lightly gripping the fully-hard cock that was already leaking against his dry-clean-only pants. “Is this a preview of what’s to come?”

“You drive me crazy,” Trevor gritted out. He groaned at the touch, his muscles tensing all the way from his chiseled abdomen to his jaw. Adrian could hear the sound of his molars grinding as he tried to keep his hips from shoving forward. “Fuck, Adrian.”

“That is the general idea,” Adrian said. “How did you intend to start?”

They weren’t on the same page on that point; they struggled for several minutes, a battle of strong limbs and fiercer wills in the midst of hard, deep kisses, until Adrian realized they were both under the impression they’d be controlling the pace.

It was an assumption Adrian had dealt with often: his long hair, pretty face, and deceptively slender build made men believe certain things about him. Made men want to _do_ specific things to him, without asking what he preferred.

Trevor’s sex-fogged expression finally cleared the third time Adrian flipped him on his back, pressing a firm palm against his chest to hold him still. “Oh,” he breathed. “Fuck, sorry. I just thought...”

“Because of the way I look?” Adrian spat out, unreasonably angry. He barely knew Trevor. Why had he thought he’d be any different?

“No,” Trevor said, reaching for the tensed thighs that were straddling him—asking, through touch, whether it was okay, whether he could slide warm palms under Adrian’s shirt, wrapping them loosely around Adrian’s admittedly slim waist. “Maybe. I don’t know. Mostly, I just really wanted to fuck you. But if you’d rather do it the other way around, I’m fine with that.”

Adrian looked down at him for a few moments, considering. Trevor’s eyes were a little glassy from both alcohol and arousal, but he met Adrian’s gaze steadily, rubbing surprisingly patient thumbs over Adrian’s taut belly.

“Don’t pull my hair,” Adrian said finally, feeling it cascade over Trevor’s chest as he bent to kiss him.

“Okay,” Trevor said, his bare skin twitching a little, tickishly, but his hands staying in place, as he’d been bidden.

When Adrian sat up enough to pull his shirt over his head, Trevor made a soft noise of disappointment. The ready quip died out in Adrian’s throat.

“You didn’t expect scars,” he said instead, as Trevor touched the line of puckered flesh cutting across his torso. “Human ailments may not affect me, but even my skin can burn.”

“It’s not that,” Trevor said, his voice still soaked with a strange sorrow. “I just thought you might...”

“Might what?” Adrian asked, but Trevor shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and pulled Adrian toward him, pressing soft lips where the scar had burned thickest, in an uneven ridge above his heart.

Peeling away the rest of Adrian’s clothes took time, as did the still-fierce debate over how, exactly, Adrian was going to allow Trevor to stick his cock inside of him. Trevor managed to snap through two condoms in a row: one torn by the jagged edge of a nail, the other from, apparently, sheer overpowered excitement.

“Are you actively attempting to cockblock yourself, or is this how you typically talk your partners into barebacking?” Adrian asked, fed up. He flung himself to the opposite end of the bed, where he could stew in wounded frustration.

Trevor, of course, simply rolled over and nuzzled at him in apology. “Believe it or not, I’ve never actually done that,” he said.

“Tricked someone?” Adrian said. “What an extraordinary boast. My confidence in you is growing by the moment.”

Trevor chuckled into the side of Adrian's throat. “No, asshole. I’ve never been a fan of babies. Or the idea of having festering sores on my dick. Always done my best to avoid either.”

“Your pillow talk is truly exceptional,” Adrian said. He sank his fingers into Trevor’s dark hair, stroking through the thick, slightly coarse strands. As had been the case all night—perhaps since the moment he’d met Trevor—he believed him. “Have you considered,” he asked eventually, “the possibility of sexually transmitted vampiric diseases.”

Trevor tilted his face up, still humming slightly in his throat as Adrian’s nails scratched along his scalp. “Is that a thing?”

“No,” Adrian said. “But you shouldn’t simply trust my word on the matter.”

Trevor responded by closing his eyes and arching into the movement of Adrian’s fingers, until Adrian was rubbing an apparently blissful spot behind his ear.

“You’re like an overgrown puppy,” Adrian informed him. A shaggy, somehow lovable beast that made a habit of rolling in garbage, then bounding back to lick you exuberantly on the face.

Trevor huffed in dark amusement, like he’d caught the edge of a joke that Adrian wasn’t privy to. Instead of filling Adrian in on whatever was going through his mind, he nipped at Adrian’s wrist, following the harmless snap of his teeth with, “Do you like dogs?”

“No,” Adrian said.

“Bad luck for me, then,” Trevor said. He propped himself up on one arm, looking bright-eyed and ready to go again. “So hey. Should I be trying for lucky number three, or were you suggesting what I think you were?”

“We’re both fools for considering it,” Adrian said. He let go of Trevor and stretched lazily, all the way from his toes, until his jaw cracked with a yawn. “But I tire of this absurd foreplay. I’d rather get on with it, if you don’t mind.”

Trevor felt larger than he’d looked: a sentiment that Adrian, for once, prudently kept to himself. Perhaps it’d been too long since he’d last tried this. He braced himself against his pillows and breathed out, reaching back to help guide Trevor inside.

“There,” he said, feeling the wide head of Trevor’s cock finally pushing where it should, leaving the rest an easier, if still tight, slide.

Trevor hissed through his teeth, and Adrian felt goosebumps suddenly pebble over Trevor’s skin. “Fuck, you’re so...”

“Cold?” Adrian asked, as chillingly as he knew the inside of his body to be. He released his grip on Trevor’s lower back and began to pull himself forward, but Trevor swore again and moved with him.

“I run,” he panted, “fuck, hotter than usual. Always have.”

“And I’m several degrees below human,” Adrian said, remaining in place for the moment, while Trevor attempted to assemble his sex-scattered brains.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “Fuck. I can’t—it’s a good thing. It stings a little, but it’s like. It’s like _mint_.”

Adrian stiffened again, not certain whether he was offended or appalled. “You’re saying being inside me is like fucking a tube of toothpaste?”

Trevor laughed so abruptly, and so hard, that he nearly pulled back out of Adrian’s irritation-clenched ass. He folded himself down against Adrian’s back instead. Adrian could feel the reverberations of Trevor’s unrestrained laughter throughout his body: a not unpleasant sensation.

“No, god no,” Trevor said eventually, loosening the arms he’d wrapped around Adrian while doing his best to hold them together. “Fuck. Only you would make me try to fucking _talk_ during sex. I just. It’s like those candies. The chocolates.”

“A minimal improvement,” Adrian said, but he was listening.

“Okay, so you know how you bite in, and at first it’s just chocolate. And it’s fine, it’s good, because everyone likes chocolate. But then you snap in all the way and there’s this—”

“Refreshing burst,” Adrian said, wondering how it was that even now, he understood what Trevor was trying to say.

“Yeah,” Trevor grunted, wrapping his arms tighter again, with a possibly unintentional brush of his lips against the no longer tense curve of Adrian’s shoulder. “It’s like Christmas. Kissing you’s like that, too. You just feel really, really good.”

From there, Trevor fucked exactly the way Adrian had expected—hard, fast, and unrelenting, his breath harsh and ragged against Adrian’s neck. It was similar to how he kissed—something he’d stopped, abruptly, the moment they shifted into new territory. Maybe he didn’t have the attention span to do both—not while his thick fingers were digging into Adrian’s hips, his cock grinding inside Adrian’s body, like he was constantly frustrated that he couldn’t get any deeper than he’d already managed, like if he pushed in hard enough, for long enough, his teeth pressing against Adrian’s nape, his cock pulsing out wet globs of pre-cum, he might actually be able to fuse their bodies together.

Adrian had never been fucked like that: not like his partner wanted to dominate him, to own him, but like he wanted to be a _part_ of him.

“Stop,” he snapped at one point, confused by the turmoil of his own thoughts. He was hardly even aware he’d said it aloud, but Trevor slowed, then entirely halted, the aggressive rolling of his hips. It wasn’t an immediate reaction; Trevor, like in the alley earlier that evening, seemed to need time for his body to catch up with the signals his brain was sending him.

“What is it?” he asked, lifting himself up from where he’d been hunched over Adrian’s back. He carefully brushed Adrian’s hair to the side, doing his best to not tangle his fingers in it.

Adrian didn’t respond. The gentleness of that gesture knocked something loose in him, something he hadn’t known he’d been holding onto.

Trevor took the lengthening silence as some kind of answer; he groaned, more of a wince than a complaint, and pulled himself fully away from, and out of, Adrian’s body.

Because he wasn’t treating him like a body, Adrian thought, ducking his head down between his arms, feeling overwhelmed and strangely, horribly vulnerable. Trevor had been paying attention to him the entire night: adjusting to whatever Adrian asked, expressing clear interest but following his lead, wanting everything to be good for both of them. Wanting them to be equal.

“Fuck,” Adrian said softly. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The weight on the bed shifted, like Trevor was planning to leave it entirely; Adrian was moving before he was aware—able, at least, to physically express what he still couldn’t say.

“Okay,” Trevor said once Adrian was straddling him again, both palms flattened against his chest this time, his ass aligned with, if not actually pressing down on, Trevor’s cock.

Trevor’s hips jolted up, trying to close the distance between them, but he grimaced and made a visible effort to focus on anything higher than Adrian’s waist. “Adrian,” he panted, clenching his fists in the sheets, blinking away the sweat that was flattening his hair and dripping down his forehead. “You’re gonna have to tell me what you want, because you’re sending me some really fucking mixed signals right now.”

“I want you to fuck me,” Adrian said. “Like this.”

“Okay,” Trevor said, still sounding a little confused, but agreeable.

Adrian wasn’t sure if it was better, or worse, to be able to see Trevor’s face as he slid onto Trevor’s cock, as his own stiffened back into that pleasant ache he’d been chasing earlier.

Trevor didn’t seem to mind the difference: he braced his feet against the mattress, keeping some of the leverage he’d lost from the change in position, but letting Adrian set the pace. With Adrian doing more of the work now, Trevor was free to let his hands roam.

“Don’t,” Adrian said when Trevor swept his hands up Adrian’s back, catching in his hair.

“Sorry,” Trevor said, snagging a few strands and yanking at Adrian’s scalp as he tried to untangle himself. “I remember. It’s just, there’s so much of it.”

He was more careful from there, and the truth was, Adrian didn’t mind it. The old, unpleasant sensory memories were fading, replaced by this: the feel of Trevor under, and in him; the way Trevor bit at his own bottom lip when he was trying, and failing, to hold back a groan; the way Trevor’s eyes kept seeking out his, like he wanted to remember who he was fucking. Like this was an itch he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, imagine scratching with anyone else.

When he felt himself getting close, he warned Adrian, stilling him with a hand on his hip as he jerked Adrian’s cock to bring him closer to completion, avidly watching each twist of his wrist, each push of Adrian’s cockhead past his spit-slicked fingers, as though Adrian’s orgasm gave him as much pleasure as his.

Adrian couldn’t understand it. For now, at least, he gave up trying.

Trevor didn’t kiss while he fucked. The kissing came after, when Adrian had expected him to leave, or to simply roll over and fall asleep, having gotten what he wanted.

Kissing had always, in Adrian’s experience, been either a precursor to—or a part of—sex. It served as a promise of what was to come, and a sometimes pleasurable extension of whatever physical connection he was, for the moment, indulging in. Men typically kissed the way they fucked—with sloppy aggression and varying degrees of skill. Regardless of his partner’s talents on either count, Adrian had always found himself wanting more: something he couldn’t define, that he had, in truth, only ever felt through poetry.

He murmured fragments now, barely conscious of what he was saying, not entirely certain that any part of it was audible, or if the words were simply sinking into Trevor’s mouth, swept away by the touch of his tongue.

Trevor kissed differently after fucking. He was gentler, more conscious of every movement—more aware, perhaps, of Adrian’s fangs now that his baser desires had been sated. It was a plausible thought that Adrian almost immediately discarded. Trevor knew who—and what—Adrian was. There’d been no hint of wariness in his touches earlier, and there was none now that they were lying together in Adrian’s bed, with the urgency momentarily drained out of them.

Trevor kissed like it hurt him—not physically, but somewhere far deeper, like he was simultaneously aching to be touched and terrified of the soft press of his own mouth against Adrian’s.

Kissing hurt Adrian, too, in a way he’d never thought possible.

“You left some important things out of our earlier discussion,” he said once he had the strength to part his mouth from Trevor’s, to bring himself back to some sense of reality.

“Hm?” Trevor asked, sounding sleepy and deeply content. Probably because he didn’t have a barrel load of cum slowly, and stickily, leaking out of his ass.

“I didn’t know it was possible for one human to have that much in him,” Adrian said, wincing and trying to shift out of the wet patch that simply spread everywhere he moved. “It was like a geyser.”

“A fire hose,” Trevor said, rolling onto his back and looking pleased with himself. “Stick with me baby, I bring my own everywhere I go.”

“That is,” Adrian said, unable to understand why he couldn’t stop laughing, “without a doubt the worst thing I have ever heard.”


	9. Chapter 9

“I’ve never laughed during sex before,” Adrian said later, after he’d scrubbed himself clean and changed his bedding. Trevor had occupied himself by raiding Adrian’s kitchen and assembling a tray of food that they were now eating on Adrian’s woefully temporary clean sheets.

Trevor sucked honey off his fingers and poked at the wedge of brie, not seeming to know what to do with it. “Thanks for that ego boost,” he said as he went for the goat cheese and prosciutto instead—probably more familiar options.

“It’s meant as a positive,” Adrian said. He peeled the smoother, less bitter interior of the brie free from its rind and fed a portion to Trevor, who closed his mouth, teasingly, around Adrian’s fingers. Adrian flicked him lightly on the forehead as he withdrew. “Much about you is unusual, Trevor. That’s all I was saying.”

“About that,” Trevor said, picking through the almonds and walnuts he’d piled on his side of the tray. He gave up and gestured at his now-clothed lower half. “That, uh, thing from before.”

“Your cock, or its copious amounts of cum?” Adrian asked, calmly, taking a handful of the unclaimed nuts, along with the discarded bits of perfectly edible, if visually off-putting, rind.

Trevor shifted uncomfortably, as though after everything they’d done, Adrian had finally stumbled across something that was capable of embarrassing him. Or, as it turned out, something that was uncomfortable for them both to consider.

“It’s a Belmont trait. Supposedly.”

Adrian set the last piece of walnut back down. Belmont. A name he had briefly managed to forget was attached to this man. “Supposedly,” he repeated.

“Well, it’s not like I’m gonna check,” Trevor said, quite reasonably. “And I’ve gotta tell you, nothing sucks quite like hearing that kind of thing from your grandpa. Especially when he says the reason for it is—” He grimaced. “This is a fucking weird thing to be telling you.”

“If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen,” Adrian said, after a pause where he considered whether he meant that.

“ _Want_ is a strong word,” Trevor said. “I’d rather neither of us knew, but I...” He picked at the food again, nudging a slice of dried apricot like it’d finish the story for him. “I can’t pretend being a Belmont isn’t a part of me.”

Adrian moved the tray to the floor, where he hoped neither of them would step on it later, and drew Trevor closer, kissing the honey-thick sorrow out of his mouth. “Tell me,” he said, recognizing this was something that ran deeper than sex.

Hearing about the Belmonts _from_ a Belmont was different. They were Trevor’s family, still, which made it difficult for him to speak of them with any degree of objectivity. Much of it boiled down to the unavoidable gauntlet of tradition: generations of Belmonts had operated in a certain way, expecting the same of those who followed. Anyone who strayed was either gently escorted back into place, or forcibly driven, depending on the level of offense.

There was a strange sort of sense to it, at least for the earlier Belmonts, who relied upon the strength of their swords and siblings to hold fast against winter storms, ravaging beasts, and the darker things that crept down from the mountains. As centuries passed, their ranks grew thinner, as did those of the demon-things they hunted. Eventually, the drive to keep their blood pure became less of a need than an obsession.

Trevor didn’t say all of this, in so many words. The parts he did describe filled gaps in Adrian’s knowledge, fitting in the pieces to a puzzle he’d never been able to research to his satisfaction.

The crux of it was that Belmonts rarely married for love.

“And sex?” Adrian asked, tracing down Trevor’s abdomen, which twitched at the sensation.

“I cemented my position in Hell a long time before this, for plenty of different reasons,” Trevor said, turning his face away. Adrian started to remove his hand, but Trevor caught his wrist. “The sex part...it’s like most religions, controlling what you do and who you do it with. We just decided our version of it was the most holy.”

“Be fruitful and multiply,” Adrian said. The Biblical admonition, for the Belmonts, would’ve been a mandate. “Nevermind sleeping with a vampire, the fact that I—”

Trevor’s hand tightened over his, and Adrian lapsed into silence.

“It’s not all bad,” Trevor said, his face still to the wall. “My parents love each other. Both my older sisters have kids, and they’re happy. My little brother’s still sixteen, but they matched his soulmark three years ago.”

Adrian shifted until he could rest his head on Trevor’s shoulder, draping his arm across Trevor’s waist. He didn’t object when Trevor twined his fingers in the long blond strands that spilled over his still-flushed torso. “Matching soulmarks?” Adrian asked. “What does that mean for you?”

For the Belmonts, he’d meant, curious about the logistics of something so notoriously difficult to pin down, but Trevor gave a short, dark huff of laughter.

“For me, next to nothing. For Dillon and my sisters...I don’t really know how it works. A million networks, a fuckton of money being thrown around. Even in my family, there’s no guarantee.” He rubbed his knuckles against his chest—an absent, angry gesture. “Sometimes the person dies, I guess, or just doesn’t want to be found. But for Belmonts, soulmarks are like...I don’t know, like fucking Gospel. A sign sent straight down from Heaven to bash you over the head. Fucking your soulmate means breeding the best Belmont babies you possibly can. And just _finding_ them, bringing them into the Belmont fold, proves we’re superior. We’ve been Chosen.”

Below his collarbones, Trevor had a sprawl of tattoos across his chest: a tangle of vines, flowers, and forest, with a few creatures caught in, or protected by, the roots and branches. Adrian had caught glimpses of a raven, a wolf, a long-eared hare, a tumble of butterflies. It was a beautifully detailed landscape, done entirely in black ink.

There were artists, Adrian knew, who specialized in matching the rich pigmentation of soulmarks. You couldn’t fake a soulmark—that would always be visible, would always stand out too obviously against skin that hadn’t blossomed with it on its own. But you could, with reasonable accuracy and a significant amount of money, conceal one if you wished.

“Do you have a soulmark?” Trevor asked, abruptly.

“Vampires don’t,” Adrian said, which wasn’t the full story.

Trevor was quiet for a bit. “That’s what I’ve always heard. But I thought that you might be...you’re human, too.”

“Does it matter?” Adrian asked.

It did, for most people. While divorce statistics were, in reality, no better for soulmatches, love matches often broke apart because one or both parties simply couldn’t let the idea go. Greener pastures. Divine providence. There were innumerable reasons to spend your life waiting for that one perfect pairing, the person who was stamped at birth to be with you.

“I’ve never laughed during sex either,” Trevor said, rearranging his limbs until he could wrap both arms around Adrian, until Adrian could feel Trevor’s heart beating rapidly against his own chest. “Tonight was fucking perfect. Every goddamn minute of it, until I fucking ruined it. Fuck, Adrian. I don’t know why I told you any of that. Can we just forget it, and start over?”

“I don’t think anyone’s memory could be that bad, even yours,” Adrian said, waiting the few seconds for Trevor to get the reference, for a chuckle to rumble through him in response.

“God,” he said. “Fucking poetry. Can I still return that book?”

It might’ve been foolish to let a Belmont stay the night, to fall asleep with him, unprotected and unguarded, when Adrian had known him for such a short time.

He really couldn’t care less.


	10. Chapter 10

Adrian woke to the by now familiar sensation of a warm mouth traveling wetly down his throat. He made a noise to let Trevor know he was awake but refused, crankily, to open his eyes.

“Sorry,” Trevor said, touching his mouth to Adrian’s in a brief but not-so-apologetic greeting. “Morning shift. I gotta go soon.”

Adrian cracked an eyelid open, just enough to check how much light was seeping through his curtains. He flung an irritated arm over his eyes. “It’s still dark, Trevor.”

Trevor laughed and gently toyed with the silky tips of Adrian’s hair. If they’d had more time, he would probably be asking if he could brush it. He liked spending leisurely mornings that way: using his surprisingly delicate fingers to loosen any tangles that had formed overnight, then carefully sweeping a soft-bristled brush from root to tip, as though the process soothed him as much as it did Adrian.

“I still think it’s fucking funny that you refuse to get out of bed until it’s light out.”

“I may be a vampire,” Adrian said, “but I have standards. If the sun doesn’t see fit to rise, why should I.”

“I made you breakfast,” Trevor said. “Burned a lot of it.”

“Fortunate, then, that I have the fire department here to take care of that.”

Trevor kissed him one more time, then shifted his weight off the bed. “Should still be edible. I put a couple bowls on one of your fancy-ass warming plates. Call me when you wake up all the way?”

Adrian acknowledged the request with another grunt but rolled to his side to watch Trevor finish getting ready. He was as efficient putting clothes on as he was taking them off; Adrian waited until the bootlaces were neatly knotted and the suspenders snapped into place over broad shoulders, then tilted his face up for a parting kiss.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful,” Trevor murmured, lingering. He was probably already running late.

“Would you like me if I wasn’t?” Adrian asked, his inhibitions too flimsy, too permeable, at this point in the morning.

Trevor knelt down beside the bed and touched Adrian’s hair, alert enough to pick up on what was behind the sudden question. They’d had a good night together, as they always did, but Adrian had begun closing off near the end, his defense mechanisms springing at a certain way Trevor had touched him during sex, a phrase he hadn’t known not to use.

“I think anyone who says physical attraction doesn’t matter is a fucking liar,” Trevor said, with his usual blunt honesty. “But I’ve met plenty of pretty people. Never met someone I wanted to spend all day arguing about books with before.”

Or an entire night searching through a collection of difficult poems for the merest scrap of a clue Adrian had sent his way. It’d been three months now, and while Trevor still hated poetry, he always listened when Adrian talked about it.

“Do you want me to tell you you’re beautiful?” Adrian asked with a tired crack of his jaw, wondering if he’d never actually done so. “If you’re fishing, I’m afraid you’ll have to be more obvious. I’m not fully myself yet.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Trevor said, looking embarrassed, but also like he did want that, a little.

Three months wasn’t long enough, yet, for Adrian to be quite that vulnerable. Not now, when the world was quiet and still, when there were no distractions to pull attention away from a statement that naked with longing. Perhaps he’d slip it in the next time they had sex, while Trevor was muttering a string of curses and compliments—his own unpolished, occasionally quite crude brand of poetry.

“But let us live while yet we may, while love and life are free. For time is time, and runs away, though sages disagree,” Adrian recited, stretching languidly, wondering if he’d be losing this battle of wills if he got out of bed. He wasn’t keeping a tally, but he did usually come out on top. Perhaps he could let Trevor win, just once.

“Which one’s that?”

“T.S. Eliot. You liked him.”

“ _Like_ is a relative term when it comes to your poetry,” Trevor said. “But he’s okay. Actually puts sentences together in a way that sounds more or less like English.” He buckled his watch around his wrist, checked the time, and pocketed his phone. “There’s sage in the sausage, by the way, professor.”

“I thought I smelled bacon,” Adrian said. “Did you use up _all_ of my groceries again?”

“I was hungry,” Trevor replied shamelessly. “We burned off a lot of energy last night; figured I deserved it. Left you plenty, though. And I’ll buy you dinner if you’ve made it out of bed by then.”

“You can cook me dinner, if you like,” Adrian said. He pillowed his head on his arm and blinked lazily at Trevor, knowing how he looked with his golden hair spilling across his long, bare torso.

“Stop it,” Trevor said, bending to kiss him again, then pushing his face away with a firm palm that smelled faintly of Adrian’s body wash. “I have to go to fucking work, Adrian.”

“Bills to pay, homes to save,” Adrian sighed, flopping—as much as he was capable of doing so—back into the sheets. “I have work, too.”

“Books to sell, customers to confuse the shit out of,” Trevor responded. “Hey, Adrian?”

“Hm?” Adrian asked.

“I...” Trevor said, biting his lower lip and fiddling with his watch. “Adrian, I...” He sighed, then simply said, “I’ll see you later.” He looked as though he’d wanted, very badly, to say something else.

*******

“The two most eligible men in town, and you’re sleeping with each other,” Sypha said, perching her birdlike frame on the counter, as Adrian had told her a hundred times not to do.

“If you’re looking for an apology, I have none at hand,” Adrian replied. “Please stop crushing the bookmarks.”

She wiggled, dislodged the stack she was sitting on, and dropped them into Adrian’s outstretched hand. They were, indeed, heavily creased in several places. “The first time you held hands in public, I think half the women I know went home in tears. Even the married ones.”

“I’m not interested in women,” Adrian reminded her. They’d had this conversation years ago, when they were both still in high school. They’d bonded, in fact, over both their love of literature and their frequent futile attraction to the same types of men.

“I know that,” Sypha said. She sighed. “I just...I suppose I was hoping that he was.”

Adrian didn’t respond. He picked out the bookmarks that had been damaged, dropped them into the recycling bin behind the counter, and arranged the rest in an attractive fan by the register. It wasn’t as though their business strictly needed promoting in a town this small, but he liked the idea of the bits of paper traveling with their books, winding up in distant thrift stores or secondhand shops. For years, when they’d been constantly on the road, he’d maintained a collection like that. Evidence of where he’d been, of where he might like to go some day, if he ever had his choice in where—and when—to move. He’d kept his stash of bookmarks in a shoebox he’d always grabbed first, the moment the knock came at his door.

“Can you at least tell me what he’s like in bed?” Sypha asked, batting her big blue eyes at him.

“That’s crass,” Adrian said, “and I will not. Do you want the books you claimed to be here for, or should I ship them back?”

“Worth a try,” Sypha said, sliding off the counter, her short strawberry blonde curls bouncing as her feet lightly hit the floor. “Yes, please. I would ask where you keep finding these gems, but you probably won’t tell me that, either.”

Adrian laughed. “My father, mostly. He brought this batch back from Bulgaria, I believe. It should have some of what you’re looking for.”

Sypha was somewhat of a rarity among humans. Raised by her grandfather, she’d known little of her history until he’d passed. It’d happened during Adrian’s first year of university; he’d walked straight out of class after getting that call, and had spent the next week helping Sypha make arrangements and sort through her grandfather’s things.

The trunk in the attic—iron, heavily bound by padlocked chains, and filled with books on magic—had come as less of a surprise than, perhaps, it should have. Adrian had always suspected there was something different about Sypha; she had an unusual sensitivity to the things his superior senses could pick out, but without any physical explanation.

Adrian had been there the first time she’d cupped a tiny, wavering flame in her palm, her eyes glowing with excitement.

Her family, it seemed, was older than the Belmonts, but lost to the shadows of an unforgiving past. With her grandfather gone, Sypha didn’t know if there were any others like her out there. Adrian had argued with his father over it, long into the night: Vlad felt that her budding powers were a danger, something to be tamped down, not encouraged.

 _Even if she doesn’t pose a direct threat to us, Adrian,_ he’d said, his eyes blood-red and piercing in the dark, the words spitting like daggers past his fully displayed fangs, _her magic could serve as a beacon. You have no idea what she could bring down on us._

Adrian’s mother had, as usual, been the one to step between them, to soothe the savage beast into listening to what his son was asking.

Sypha was careful with her magic. She developed it slowly over the years, relying on both instinct and the instructions in the books her grandfather had left behind. Vlad eventually unbent enough to bring her one book, then three, then a box full he’d found—or stolen—during his travels. He never explained where, exactly, they came from, but Sypha’s pixie-sharp face brightened with joy every time Adrian handed her a new set to leaf through.

She was diving into the box now, like a tiny, flitting sparrow, her hair and the blue hood of her sweatshirt bouncing with each excited movement as she described what she was finding. Her sleeves kept falling over her hands, too long for her slight frame; Adrian watched as she impatiently pushed them up each time, a frayed cuff hiding, then exposing, the soulmark on the underside of her left wrist.

“Have you ever tried to find him?” he asked when Sypha had finally settled into place, an oversized book open in her cross-legged lap.

“Who?” she responded, not really listening, flipping eagerly through the pages.

“Your soulmate,” Adrian said. With a location like that, easily visible to the world and likely to show up in candid photographs, it shouldn’t be that difficult to track down the inky mark that exactly matched hers.

Sypha turned her wrist over and flexed her forearm, watching the finely detailed chalice shift with the movement of her pale, blue-veined skin. “Not really,” she said. “If I find him, I find him. I’d rather spend my life doing more interesting things than poring through soulmark forums.”

Or paying the sometimes steep price of admission for the more comprehensive databases.

“Look,” Sypha said abruptly, stabbing her finger against a hand-tinted illustration. “This bit about controlling ice crystals. It directly contradicts what I’ve been trying for the past _year_. I told you that so-called Persian scroll was a fake.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that along to my father,” Adrian said dryly, imagining how he’d react to this pintsize magician challenging him yet again.

Nevertheless, he dropped the subject of soulmates and provided loyal encouragement for the next hour as Sypha suspended a droplet of water in midair, then, with a clench of her fist, froze it solid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adrian's morning musings are from [Song](https://poets.org/poem/song-8) by T.S. Eliot.


	11. Chapter 11

Winter crept in late that year, as though it was embarrassed to have missed its cue. It made up for the delay in a rush of chilled winds and icicles that formed, seemingly overnight, on the eaves of both homes and businesses.

“Nearly lost my head to one this morning,” Trevor said as Adrian caught him by the shirt to keep him from smashing face first into a needle-sharp, translucent sliver clinging to the overhang of Adrian’s little balcony. The space barely fit two chairs and was framed by flimsy metal bars that creaked worryingly in stronger breezes, but Adrian liked sitting out there with his coffee, watching the world below him pass by.

“I’ll express an appropriate level of concern once you clarify which head you mean,” Adrian said. He smiled, retreating a few steps so Trevor couldn't see, when Trevor responded by punching him lightly on the shoulder.

“Fuck you,” Trevor said. “You can stop pretending you don’t like me as much for my brains as my dick.”

“I’ve grown to appreciate both,” Adrian allowed.

Trevor shivered, his hair tugged by another icy blast sweeping down from the hills, and Adrian wrapped his arms around him from behind, setting his chin against Trevor’s shoulder. “Aren’t you cold? You should come inside.”

“The last time I did that, you bitched for hours,” Trevor said, laughing and following Adrian into the apartment when he let go of him in annoyance. “C’mon. That was funny.”

Much as Adrian enjoyed the feel of Trevor’s cock pulsing inside of him, suffusing his body with warmth, he despised the cleanup that came after. Trevor had begun helping, spreading Adrian’s thighs in the shower and cleaning him carefully with a soft washcloth, or, sometimes, with his tongue. It improved matters, but it still took hours for the sticky sensation to fully subside.

“If you keep along this path, I may reconsider fucking you tonight,” Adrian warned him, in an outright, obvious lie.

The way they made love differed depending on the night, and their moods. Adrian kept his pace slow this time, easing Trevor’s pleasure out of him.

“Fuck,” Trevor groaned, screwing up his face and doing his level best to shove his ass deeper onto Adrian’s cock. “You absolute fucker. Who made you so fucking strong.”

Adrian relented, just a little, and Trevor gasped in relief, squeezing at the base of his own cock to hold off for longer, until Adrian had finished having his way with him.

Trevor was breathless and soaked in sweat by the time they were done, but, as always, the moment Adrian pulled out, Trevor was reaching for him, his mouth eager—almost desperate—for the kisses they’d put on hold while they fucked.

“I missed you,” Trevor said eventually, clinging to Adrian like a bundle of vines and refusing to let him move off the bed to strip the sheets. Adrian’s cleaning bills were becoming outrageous; he sorely needed to institute some sort of sex blanket policy to keep from wearing the rest of his linens threadbare.

“How? I haven’t gone anywhere,” he said, stroking Trevor’s sweaty hair out of his face and running his thumb along the scar that slashed through Trevor’s left eyebrow and all the way down his cheek. It stood out in a sharp, white-hot line against his sex-flushed skin. Although he always turned his face into Adrian’s touch during moments like this, he’d never explained the source of his injury. Then again, they’d never discussed Adrian’s much uglier and far larger scar.

“Hate sleeping alone,” Trevor said, gruff and honest and always so terrifyingly open. “The guys give me so much shit for it. They say crap like—well, I punched one of the dickbags, but he wasn’t wrong. The bit he said about me, I mean, which wasn’t why I broke his fucking nose.”

“My shining knight,” Adrian said fondly, stroking again over Trevor’s scar, then kissing the corner of his mouth. “I’m grateful for you defending what I presume to be my quite sullied honor, but you know I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”

“I know,” Trevor said. “But I feel manly when you let me beat the crap out of them instead.”

“You didn’t get in trouble?” Adrian asked.

Trevor chuckled. “No, when the Captain showed up, he gave the shithead an even worse tongue-lashing. Almost reminded me of you, for a second. He did threaten to suspend me for a few days if I did it again, but.” He shrugged, indicating that it’d been worth it.

Trevor’s work schedule was inconsistent; Adrian still had trouble keeping track of it. He mostly ran on twelve to fourteen hour shifts, rotating between days and nights, and remaining on call for support, as needed, for the surrounding counties. Lately, they’d begun to put him in a 24 on, 48 off rotation, which meant that Trevor would have the next two days free—after which he would, yet again, need to spend a full 24 hours away from Adrian’s arms.

Adrian nuzzled against Trevor’s throat, testing whether _his_ arms were ready to release him yet. “Have you even been to your own home in the last month?” he asked.

Trevor groaned, either at the question or the ticklish sensation. He bumped his head against Adrian’s, stilling the movement of his cold nose. “Is that a hint?”

“No,” Adrian said. “I’m simply pointing out that you spend more time at my place than yours, as it is. And when you’re not here, you’re sleeping at the fire station. There’s not much point in continuing to pay Margaret rent.”

“I don’t think they’ll actually let me live at the station,” Trevor said. “Chip tried, and he got found out in a week.”

“If you’re being deliberately obtuse, I’ll put it in clearer terms,” Adrian said. “I’m saying that you should move in with me. That way you can at least begin to pay for half of the groceries you’ve been eating regardless.”

Trevor didn’t respond. Perhaps he _hadn’t_ actually understood Adrian the first time. Or, Adrian thought, lifting himself out of a grip that had suddenly become loose enough to make that possible, maybe he was having trouble figuring out how to turn down the offer.

“You don’t have to, of course,” Adrian said, trying, and failing, to get a glimpse of Trevor’s face. “If it’s important for you to keep a room that’s fully— _oof_ ,” he said, making a disgracefully unrefined noise when Trevor surged up to kiss him.

“Should I take that as an answer?” he asked, later, when Trevor had finished leaving a ridiculous number of mouth-shaped bruises along his collarbones. They would fade more quickly than on purely human skin, but they always lasted long enough to satisfy Trevor’s periodic surges of possessive behavior.

“Adrian,” Trevor said, his eyes wide and bright. “I...fuck.”

“What is it?” Adrian asked, brushing away the dark lock of hair that always fell across Trevor’s forehead, no matter how recently he’d gotten a trim.

Trevor swallowed, then lifted his chin, his jaw jutting out in determination. “I love you, Adrian. I just really needed you to know that.”

Adrian didn’t say it back.


	12. Chapter 12

Trevor didn’t seem to mind, which, somehow, made Adrian feel worse.

Moving Trevor’s belongings into Adrian’s home took very little time. All of his books fit into a single box, but as they unpacked it, Adrian stroked his thumbs over the soft pages, his heart feeling strangely warm and full. These weren’t things that Trevor put on display, or simply lugged around because he hadn’t bothered to clean out his closets. He’d read these, repeatedly, until the sharp corners were worn smooth from use.

The e.e. cummings volume, although in much newer condition than the rest, with no creases along its spine, turned out to be filled with cramped, handwritten notes.

“I’ll take care of those,” Trevor said, sounding embarrassed, and snagging the book out of Adrian’s hands. “Could you look at the kitchen stuff? I have some pans, but with your freakish Iron Chef setup, I’m not sure we really need them.”

The main difficulty came in making space for Trevor’s things; although the possessions he brought with him were minimal, Adrian had already filled every corner of his apartment.

As he’d done months before, he sat on his floor, surrounded by boxes, and began determining what he truly needed to keep.

“Hey, I like that one,” Trevor objected when Adrian tried to place one of his less-worn shirts in the donation pile.

“I have three others like it,” Adrian said. “Plus, this one is stained.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “From the first time we kissed. That patch of fry grease is basically our anniversary.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Adrian said, deliberately folding the shirt and setting it with the other clothes he would be giving away. “Next you’ll be asking if we can frame the sheets from the first time we fucked.”

“You’d have to get rid of a couple bookcases for that, since your bed is fucking huge,” Trevor said. “But that’s a good idea, maybe we can start with—oh fuck, ow, I was kidding, fuck _off_ , your nails are sharp.”

***

“You actually wore this?” Trevor asked some time later, holding up a ruby-crusted cross suspended from a thick silver chain.

Adrian glanced at it, not losing track of the earrings he’d been sorting through. “It was a phase. If only I had the opportunity to judge your youthful indiscretions so thoroughly. Donation pile.”

“No, I meant,” Trevor said, gesturing again to the pendant.

“Ah,” Adrian said. “You meant didn’t it make my unsanctified skin sizzle. Do you remember the heart attack you nearly had the first time you saw me eat garlic?”

“Huh,” Trevor said. He wound the necklace around his fingers and sealed it off in one of the jewelry bags Adrian had set between them. “So just you, or is that true for your dad, too?”

“Please don’t tell my father you’re looking for ways to kill him,” Adrian said. “He’s already displeased enough at the idea of us dating. But no, it’s a myth.”

“Holy water?” Trevor asked.

Adrian dumped the entire pile of earrings into a plastic bin and tossed it to Trevor, who caught it neatly and dropped it into the donation box. “All based in moral superiority. If one side says the Church, and by extension God, is with them, then no one can argue with their actions. At least not without turning much of the populace against them, which I think was largely your ancestors’ intent.”

“That’s shitty,” Trevor said.

“Indeed. I think all of this can go. The drawer these came from is shallow, but it should fit your socks, if you stop crumpling them into wads.”

“Folding socks is insane,” Trevor said. “Like, literally, _I_ will go fucking crazy if you make me do that every time. Can’t I just throw half of them out? I wear the same ones anyway for—”

“If you tell me you wear a single pair of socks multiple days in a row, _particularly_ with the type of strenuous exercise I know you get on a daily basis,” Adrian said, warningly.

Trevor sighed. “Can I roll them into balls?”

“I don’t particularly care what you do with your balls,” Adrian said, still attempting to reconcile his strangely enduring attraction to this man.

“I’ll change my socks more often,” Trevor bargained, his eyes brightening. “If you keep our sex shirt.”

Adrian lifted an eyebrow. “I thought it was a first kiss shirt. Or are you proposing that I wear it while we have sex?”

The next hour was distracting and rather unproductive; at the end of it, the now thoroughly stained shirt went directly into Adrian’s trash.

***

“I don’t like him,” Vlad said.

“Well, I do,” Adrian replied, shortly. “Which I believe is more pertinent.”

“Lisa,” Vlad said, turning to his wife with the pleading expression that only she ever pulled out of him.

She opened her mouth, closed it, looked at Adrian, then lifted her hands helplessly as she met her husband’s eyes. “I’m sorry, darling. He’s kind to Adrian, which would’ve won me over even if I hadn’t already liked him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boy so in love.”

Vlad frowned. The argument, for all intents and purposes, was over, so he shifted gears. He spoke more softly than Adrian was used to; it made his skin prickle in suspicion, although he knew the concern was genuine. “I’m thinking of you, Adrian. No matter how you feel about this Belmont boy, it’s not wise. The truce with his family only holds because...”

He trailed off, which was more unsettling than anything he might’ve said. “Because?” Adrian prompted, but Vlad was looking at his wife.

Their exchange was in a language Adrian was not privy to: wordless, composed of small gestures and flickers of emotions in their eyes. When they were done, Vlad sighed, then stood to his feet. He set a heavy hand on Adrian’s shoulder, then, unexpectedly, squeezed it.

“I married for love,” he said. “And I have not regretted it for one day. But that decision has also hurt the ones I love. I simply need you to consider that.”

Adrian poked at his lasagna for a while after his father left. His mother had made extra, spooning a generous portion into a flower-patterned casserole dish she’d set aside for him to take home. “For Trevor,” she’d said, kindly, which had sparked the flame of Vlad’s ever-simmering disapproval.

They usually avoided the subject on family nights, all three of them pretending that Adrian didn’t have a human—formerly hunter—boyfriend waiting for him across town.

“What do you think he’d do if I ever brought Trevor here,” Adrian said, stabbing through one of the larger chunks of meat in the bolognese.

“Have a heart attack,” his mother said. She sipped at her wine glass, a smile just visible over the rim. “Despite what you sometimes think, your father does have a fully functional one of those.”

Adrian made a harsh noise in his throat, conveying his doubt on the matter.

“I don’t agree with him on this, sweetheart, but he _is_ thinking of what’s best for you, at least from his perspective. He’s worried.”

 _It’s his fault I have to be_ , Adrian thought, and didn’t say.

He rubbed at his scar, letting his fork sink into the delicious meal he’d lost any interest in finishing. “Mother,” he said. “Do you ever think about what your life would’ve been like if you’d...”

“Hm?” she asked, refilling her wine glass, then Adrian’s.

He took another breath, then said what he’d spent much of his life wondering. “If instead of marrying Father, you’d looked for your soulmate.”

His mother’s hand stopped midair, shaking slightly, before she set her forkful of noodles back on her plate. “Have I thought about that? Yes, of course.”

“Trevor has a soulmate,” Adrian said, in a rush, all the anxieties that’d been strangling him for months pouring out now that his mother was listening to him. “He says it doesn’t matter, that he loves me, but I...I can’t say it. Not when there’s someone else out there who...”

“Who’s meant for him?” his mother asked, her voice so soft, so comforting, that Adrian felt five years old again, ready to curl up in her lap after a nightmare.

“If you’d married your soulmate, you would’ve been able to finish your medical degree,” Adrian said, trying, and failing, to keep his voice from choking over the words. “You wouldn’t have spent two decades of your life running, or hiding, terrified that someone was literally going to murder you and your family. You wouldn’t be...” He swiped at his eyes, feeling younger than five now, and broken into pieces. “You wouldn’t be running a shitty bookstore in the middle of nowhere with a son who has nothing to show for the life he was never even supposed to have had. I know what you’re going to say about soulmates and about Trevor, but I just...I can’t. I can’t take that from him. Maybe Father’s right. Maybe I should just break up with him.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mother said, pulling him into a hug that used to feel like it could melt away all the world’s problems. “No. No, my beautiful baby boy. The only thing your father was right about tonight was what he said about us. Our family. I would never, never choose a world that didn’t have you in it.”

“But,” Adrian choked, through something that was far too much like a sob.

“No,” she said firmly, holding him against her until his shaking slowed, although it didn’t stop. “No, my sweet, generous, wonderful Adrian. I don’t know who my soulmate was, and I don’t care. I love your father, and I am so incredibly grateful that being with him meant I could bring you into this world.”

She stroked Adrian’s tear-wet hair out of his face and rocked him slightly, although he was taller than her, now, and—physically—so much stronger. But in their family, that had never mattered.

“Sometimes the bookstore bores me, it’s true. But some days I love it. It’s a different way of bringing healing to people: not through medicine, but through words. I know you understand that.” She pressed a kiss at his hairline, then set her cheek against his forehead, her voice vibrating through him as she continued. “And no profession is perfect. I might’ve been miserable as a doctor. I certainly would’ve been without the two of you.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Adrian admitted quietly.

“About Trevor? Or—about your own future.” She paused. “Away from here?”

Adrian nodded, his mother’s head, still pressed against his, moving with it.

He felt his mother’s soft sigh as she sat back a little, taking his chin in her delicate hand so she could look him in the eye. “I’m grateful that I’ve been able to spend so much time with you, Adrian, watching you grow into such a beautiful man. I’ve been selfish. I haven’t wanted to let you go. All I know is this: you can set your mind to anything you want to do, and I will support you every inch of the way. And so will that boy of yours. Trevor would walk into Hell for you, sweetheart. You just have to ask him.”

“I don’t want that,” Adrian said, frowning when she laughed a little, shaking his chin from side to side to try to dislodge the disapproval that was likely painted across his face.

“You know I don’t mean it literally. While I’m glad you’re talking to me about this, Adrian, you need to tell Trevor what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Adrian said.

“Well,” his mother replied, her voice taking on that brisk, businesslike tone that would’ve served her well as a doctor. When she sat back fully, folding her hands thoughtfully in front of her, Adrian was almost surprised that she didn’t magically produce a pen and a pad of paper to begin jotting notes. “First things first. Do you love him?”

“I ca—” Adrian said, and his mother shook her head.

“I’m not asking if you should, or if you’re planning to _tell_ him. Right now, if you search your heart, if you’re being fully honest with yourself, do you love Trevor Belmont?”

Adrian hesitated, his fingers curling against his thighs. He knew the answer, but...if he was ever going to say it, it had to be to Trevor, first.

“Next question,” his mother said. It was her turn to hesitate. She twisted the gold band on her left ring finger. “Has Trevor ever talked to you about his soulmate? Have you...you must not have seen his soulmark.”

She sounded confused; Adrian flushed a little, wishing his mother wasn’t thinking about how every inch of Trevor’s body must have been visible to him by now.

“He’s covered it,” Adrian said. He’d intentionally never looked at the tattoos closely enough to try to pick out the soul-ink from the rest; it was Trevor’s secret, not a part of the relationship they’d been forming. And Adrian had, quite honestly, not wanted to know whose mark Trevor carried on his skin.

“So Trevor has obscured his soulmark and told you, explicitly, that no matter who his soulmate is, he’s chosen you.”

Adrian shifted in his chair. He nodded. Putting in those terms made his objection seem thin, based more on fear than reality, which was likely part of why he’d avoided voicing it for so long.

“And what about you?” his mother asked. “Do you need to know who your soulmate was? If you did, would that make a difference?”

Adrian rolled his lips together, feeling miserable and parched, the turbulent emotions and unwanted tears having drained too much of him. “I don’t care who he was,” he said. “I’m...I’m glad it’s gone. I would’ve only ever wanted it to be Trevor.”

His mother looked over Adrian’s shoulder, to the doorway that led from their kitchen to the basement’s master bedroom. When Adrian turned, he saw his father standing there, his arms folded over his chest, the always harsh line of his mouth as soft as Adrian had ever seen it.

“Sweetheart,” Adrian’s mother said, reaching forward to take his hand, as his father moved to her side, the three of them linked at last. “There’s something we need to tell you.”


	13. Chapter 13

For the first time since Adrian had met Trevor, he could easily pick out his footsteps; it was difficult, even for someone with stealth literally built into his DNA, to walk quietly on a fresh crust of snow.

“I’m not sure if I love this or hate it,” Trevor said, his breath puffing out in thick white clouds. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his fur-hooded parka, but his cheeks and nose were pink with the cold. “Hey look,” he said, grinning and billowing a huge puff of winter-smoke in Adrian’s direction. “Secret’s out now, I’ve always been a fuckin’ dragon.”

“You are a child,” Adrian said, lightly stepping out of reach when Trevor tried to retaliate by stuffing chunks of ice down the back of his coat.

“You’re just jealous you can’t do it,” Trevor said, shaking his fingers and blowing on them. “Shit, that was dumb. Supposed to get a lot colder this weekend, though. We can try again then.”

“When even someone who isn’t built like a boiler might be able to see their breath,” Adrian said. He took Trevor’s hands between his, holding them for a few moments, sharing what warmth he had available, then brought them to his lips to kiss them.

“Why are we out here, anyway?” Trevor asked. “I mean, not that I mind. You know I love hiking with you, and it’s pretty fucking gorgeous right now. But if I’d realized we were going this far up in the woods, I probably would’ve worn different clothes.”

“Sorry,” Adrian said. “I wasn’t thinking of the weather. I just...wanted to show you something.”

“Okay,” Trevor said. He tucked his hands under his armpits, stamped his feet a bit to kick his energy back into gear, and looked at Adrian expectantly.

With complete, unflinching trust, like dragging someone halfway up a mountain in the middle of the night wasn’t something a serial killer might do. Or a vampire, come to that.

“Trevor,” Adrian said, retreating a little closer to the woodline of the clearing they’d stopped in, needing some distance between them so he couldn’t sway into the warm orbit of Trevor’s body, silencing his question against Trevor’s lips. Or, the fear lurking in the back of his brain said, so he could more easily flee if Trevor responded badly.

“Adrian,” Trevor replied, smirking slightly. “Listen, though, if you brought me out here to have some sort of kinky wood sex, I’m on board, but you might have to take me to the hospital after. I really don’t wanna lose anything important to frostbite.”

“Please don’t take your pants off right now,” Adrian sighed, mentally calculating how quickly he could run Trevor back to town if he did manage to do something unaccountably idiotic this distance from civilization.

“For once, I’m not gonna argue with you,” Trevor said. “You look weird. What’s going on?”

“You always do know how to flatter me,” Adrian said. That was good, though; the full moon was spilling enough light into the clearing for even Trevor’s human eyes to see clearly. “Trevor,” he said again, “can you tell me about your soulmark?”

Trevor visibly flinched.

“Please,” Adrian said. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Trevor’s shoulders hunched around his ears. Adrian could hear the sharp click of Trevor’s jaw as he clenched it tighter, his teeth snapping together.

Adrian waited.

“I really fucking hate that you’re asking me this,” Trevor ground out. Adrian’s chest clenched painfully at that reaction, at hearing a tone that dark, that angry, directed at him for the first time. “If it was anyone other than you, I’d just...” Trevor licked his lips, took a deep breath, and stared deep into the woods, visibly working to calm himself.

“Fuck,” he said finally, his voice thick, just as Adrian was about to take the question back, to stop this plan in its tracks.

But Trevor didn’t sound angry anymore. Just tired, and sad. “The truth is, the first time we met, I thought...goddammit, it doesn’t matter. My soulmark’s fucked up. There’s always been something wrong with it.”

“That can’t happen,” Adrian said quietly. “Whether you believe they’re divine, or simply a part of our biological makeup, your soulmark is as much you as your eye color. We can wear contacts, dye our hair, and reject our soulmates if it’s not the path we want to follow. But if someone told you that from birth, the piece of your soul that you wear on your skin made you broken, or wrong, it was a lie.”

“Dammit, Adrian,” Trevor said, turning his face away. His shoulders were still hunched too tall, too stiff, but they were shaking a little now.

“You asked me a while ago if I ate red meat,” Adrian said.

“Not in public,” Trevor quoted, clearing his throat and turning back now that the conversation seemed like it was drifting into safer terrain.

Adrian still hadn’t eaten steak, or anything fresh with blood, around Trevor. It wasn’t that Adrian didn’t trust him. The habit was simply too ingrained to break without conscious effort. That line had been one of the few he could hold between them, maintaining the fiction that any part of him, at this point, didn’t belong to Trevor.

Trevor swore suddenly when Adrian began methodically stripping off his clothes. “I thought you said we _weren’t_ here to have sex,” he said, sounding bewildered by too many tone shifts, too quickly, in bone-chilling weather that was beginning to make his teeth audibly chatter.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Adrian said, dropping his pants, then his underwear, to the forest floor, and taking a running leap that, despite the distance, instinctively pushed Trevor several steps back into a defensive stance, his hunter’s blood kicking in faster than his brain could process what he was seeing.

Adrian landed on four paws, shook his furry coat, and dashed toward the rustling he’d heard in the underbrush. A deer would be more impressive, and more satisfying to sink his teeth into, but he didn’t have enough time for that kind of hunt tonight. Not if he wanted Trevor to still be standing where he’d left him.

It only took a few seconds. A quick charge of heavy paws to flush the rabbit out, a feint to the side, then a twisting turn he threw his whole body into. He snapped the rabbit’s neck between teeth that ached at the warm, refreshing drip of still-pumping blood, and trotted back to the clearing.

“What the fuck,” Trevor said as Adrian dropped the rabbit at his feet, then waved his tail lightly and sat back, his ears pricked attentively.

“I thought you were a vampire,” Trevor said, squinting up at the full moon suspended above them, then looking back at Adrian in time to catch him rolling his eyes.

“Fuck, it’s really you,” he breathed, dropping to his knees in the bloodied snow, lifting his hands to— “Shit,” he said, stopping with his palms on either side of Adrian’s thickly furred ruff. “Am I allowed to touch you?”

Adrian butted his broad forehead into Trevor’s chest in answer, and Trevor sank his fingers into Adrian’s fur.

“God, you’re soft,” he marveled. “I have no fucking idea what’s happening, but you’re beautiful. Of course you’re gorgeous like this, too. And you’re fucking huge. Have people _seen_ you like this?”

Adrian shook his head, then shrugged his shoulders, lightly. He didn’t think so. He had the impression Hector might’ve seen him, once, from a distance, but they’d never talked about it.

“Yeah, because you’re too big to be an actual wolf, not with these fucking gigantic paws, or these ears, you must be able to hear miles away with these things,” Trevor said fondly, scratching behind them, then rubbing all the way up to their pointed tips. “Your eyes are exactly the same, you know that? You look like yourself still, somehow. White fur, though. I guess you couldn’t be blond, not like this.”

Adrian huffed; Trevor laughed and ruffled his ears again.

“Yeah. That too, the way you look like you’re wondering right now why the fuck you ever let me date you.”

Adrian snorted, but shoved his head against Trevor’s chest again, his own filling with warmth when Trevor smiled and scratched under his chin.

“I wonder if I would’ve recognized you,” he mused. “If I’d just seen you out in the wild like this, with those crazy long legs and your fucking gorgeous gold eyes. I think that I still would’ve...” His roughly affectionate fingers had been traveling down Adrian’s furry chest, scratching pleasurably as they went; he stopped abruptly when they met the thick line of scarred flesh that was even more apparent in this form, standing out as a deep furrow Adrian’s silver-white fur couldn’t cover.

“Adrian,” Trevor said, too softly, staring him in the eyes, his own starting to look a little wild. “Your fur’s white. Maybe that’s why I didn’t...it took me a few seconds, but you look exactly like...” He swore, and buried his face suddenly in the fur around Adrian’s throat, his fingers gripping Adrian’s ruff so tightly it almost hurt.

Adrian nuzzled against his tense back, letting out a quiet whine.

“You said we,” Trevor said, letting go of him and falling backwards in the snow, wincing as he brushed melting chunks of ice off his jeans.

Adrian whined again, lifting a paw to scratch urgently at Trevor’s pants, which were soaked through in patches. It was too cold here. They needed to start moving again, to get Trevor back to dry clothes and heated air.

“I’m fine,” Trevor said, waving away the concern. “For now, anyway. This is more important. When you were talking about soulmarks earlier, you said _we can reject our soulmates_. That _our_ soulmarks are a part of us.”

He clenched his fingers in his lap, then looked up again, his blue eyes shining a little wetly—a storm-tossed sea, with all hope for land thought lost long ago.

“Adrian,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Tell me how you got your scar.”


	14. Chapter 14

Trekking into the woods for this conversation was probably foolish; Adrian simply hadn’t been able to imagine a scenario where he could transform into an oversized wolf in their apartment without Trevor breaking at least five pieces of furniture in his surprise.

It was a little easier, too, to talk this way, walking side by side through the forest. Adrian could pick apart Trevor’s extraordinary inability to care properly for the safety of his own limbs, and Trevor could grouse back with something that was somehow simultaneously insulting and affectionate. Talking like this, the way they always had, made the rest come more naturally.

The reality was that nothing had changed; they’d always been soulmates. They simply hadn’t known about the corroborating marks inked over their hearts.

Their story was a difficult one, wreathed in flames and shrouded by the flawed memories of two young boys who’d gone through almost unspeakable trauma. Adrian, eight years old when he’d lost his soulmark, had blocked out most of the day’s events.

“They came for you when your dad couldn’t protect you,” Trevor gritted out, swinging a stick angrily at the tree trunks as they passed, then snapping it into pieces and flinging it aside.

“Sunlight won’t kill him, but it does leave him weak. He avoids it when possible,” Adrian said. The Belmonts had known at least that much.

They’d arrived shortly after noon, when the summer sun was at its peak, and Dracula was fast asleep. The human, Lisa, and the golden-haired demon child had gone to the small playground at the end of their cul-de-sac. There wasn’t much to it—a sand pit, a plastic slide, and rickety-seated swings—but they went there almost every day after lunch, like clockwork. It was the longest they’d been able to stay in one place since the child’s unholy birth, and they’d grown careless.

Adrian remembered flashes of that: blue sky and warm sunlight; clouds that he tried to kick his feet into; laughing as he swung higher and faster than his mother, who’d joined him in the playful competition.

Eight was too old for Adrian’s mother to push him on the swings. And it was, the Belmonts thought, old enough to survive the punishment they’d spent months planning.

“I don’t know why they didn’t just kill me,” Adrian said. “Although...judging from the way my father spoke, it was difficult enough as it was for my mother to keep him from hunting down every last Belmont in retaliation.”

“My family’s not afraid of much,” Trevor said, looking like he very badly wanted to punch something. “Dracula scares the living shit out of them. If the entire thing hinged on them separating you from your dad, that meant they couldn’t kill both of you at the same time. Wouldn’t have been worth the risk.”

“All three of us,” Adrian said quietly.

“No,” Trevor said, “they only hunt what they see as abominations. They wouldn’t kill—”

He cut himself off, and they trudged on in pointed, painful silence.

“Fuck,” Trevor said at last. “I’m sorry. You’re right, they spent ten goddamn years trying to kill all three of you. It didn’t matter that your mom’s human, or that you were just a kid who didn’t ever do a fucking thing to them. It’s just hard for me to think that they’d...”

“I know,” Adrian said. They were Trevor’s family, as Dracula was his. You were raised to trust your parents, to believe what they told you about the world. Sometimes—too often—what they taught was hate.

The Belmonts, as Trevor had said, spent years hunting the Ţepeş family. It almost began to seem like a game, or a training exercise for those just coming up through the ranks. Wait for Dracula to get comfortable, then ride into town to drive him out. Rinse and repeat, one year after the next, sometimes with gaps as little as two months.

Adrian didn’t know what their true purpose was—if they’d ever actually anticipated killing Dracula, or if they were toying with him, hounding from him from place to place until, perhaps, he gave up on his own, retreating to his abandoned castle to sleep for a hundred years, leaving the land to the humans who had defeated him. Maybe they hoped he’d take his abomination of a child with him, or...

 _They don’t think of me as a husband or father_ , Vlad had said, as Adrian stared into the pasta congealing on his plate, struggling to process what he was hearing. _I am a monster with no care for a son they’d shown to be damaged and weak, or for a human mother who could not defend him. They believed I would abandon you, or finish the job myself. They think me worse than a beast._

Dracula had spent Adrian’s entire childhood running, not because he feared the Belmonts, but for love of the woman the Belmonts considered a traitor to their kind.

 _Lisa would not have me come to her with hands soaked in blood_ , Vlad had said, leaving Adrian to fill in the rest.

The Belmonts’ plan was a more stealthy one on this occasion; they took human mother and inhuman child almost before either were aware, leaving them no room to cry out for help. Adrian struggled, furious and frightened and trying to get to his mother, but he was still a child. A mob of human hands and weapons could easily hold him down.

They drove fast and far, to a stretch of wilderness where neither Dracula nor his human neighbors would be able to interfere. There, like any men who’d ever believed their violence was holy, they explained why these actions had been necessary.

The half-vampire child, restrained by men who shuddered at the very sight of him, who almost seemed to fear him more than they did his father, was told very little. He knew that the mark he bore enraged them, that they felt justified in taking it from him. The rest they shared only with Lisa, in hopes that she could still be broken from Dracula’s thrall.

As Trevor had once told Adrian, the Belmonts’ search for soulmarks began early. It could take decades to track down a match, and sometimes—as in his case—they never succeeded. Some soulmates weren’t meant to be found.

The truth, Lisa discovered that afternoon, was that they’d located Trevor’s when he was barely ten, and Adrian had just turned eight.

Adrian’s parents still didn’t know how this knowledge had come to the Belmonts. The most likely culprit would’ve been a photo album left in a house that hadn’t quite burned to the ground behind them. A snapshot of Adrian laughing with his mother at the beach, or one of the embarrassing bath time photos that all parents loved to take of their newborns: all the Belmonts needed was one crisp, clear picture to bring their nightmares crashing down on them.

Trevor wasn’t just a Belmont. He came from the purest of their stock, the eldest son in an unbroken line of soulmatches. And he, as the Belmonts confirmed when they had Dracula’s child in front of them, shared a mark with a monster.

They brought Trevor with them. Lisa, who had witnessed everything, her heart tearing open as she bruised her limbs purple-black trying to protect the son she would not renounce, saw the Belmonts bring forward a small child with slicked-back dark hair and a solemn expression. She didn’t know what they’d intended: for Trevor to be faced with the abomination he’d need to purge from his blood, or for his family to force him to reject the match, to burn the mark away himself.

Trevor’s parents arrived before the two children met face-to-face. They were angry. The roiling knot of humans argued, less unified than they’d seemed.

“It was my grandpa who took me,” Trevor said, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his voice rough. “Him and my uncle. I guess they didn’t actually tell my parents what they were doing. I...honestly, I don’t remember a lot from that day, but I remember my dad being pissed. And my mom. I think she would’ve stabbed my grandpa through the throat if my dad hadn’t held her back.”

He and Adrian stopped at the treeline, where they could see their little town’s lights spread below them, warm and welcoming. Trevor looked at Adrian, then away, then reached for him, tentatively, like Adrian might refuse the gesture.

Trevor’s hand was slightly chapped from the cold; Adrian wrapped his fingers tightly around it and tugged them down the hill, toward their waiting apartment and its central heating.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Trevor said thickly, as though Adrian’s trauma had been his fault, as though a ten year old forced to watch atrocities could be the one to stop them.

But Trevor, Adrian knew, had done his best.

“My mother said she’s never seen anything like it. You kept telling them to stop, to let me go. When no one would listen, you flew into some sort of a rage.”

Lisa had watched a child pick up a shortsword and fight his way through a line of battle-seasoned adults. Most of them were on the defensive, trying to hold him back without harming him, but it took all their strength, and he was still gaining ground.

He was stopped by a slash from his grandfather’s whip, a harsh line down his cheek that burned red, then bled.

The group tore apart then, some fixed on their task and others unable to conceive of a righteous path that embraced disfiguring one of their own.

Trevor wasn’t present for the rest. Lisa could hear him for long minutes after he’d disappeared from view, dragged by his parents, a cloth pressed against his bloody wound. He was kicking and screaming. Telling them to _do something_.

It was Trevor’s grandfather who held the iron poker over the fire, who pressed its red-hot length against Adrian’s chest, until any evidence of the link between their families was gone.

The Belmonts left them there, in the sun-scorched desert, for Adrian’s father to find.

“I didn’t know,” Trevor said again, as they stamped their boots at the door, as he peeled off his snow-flecked coat and shivered violently at the sudden return of warmth to his chilled limbs. “I remember...somebody with blond hair, maybe. Probably your mom. I don’t think I saw more than quick glimpses of you.”

“No one ever told you what happened?” Adrian asked. He brushed the light dusting of snow out of Trevor’s hair; Trevor leaned, briefly, into the touch.

“No. I guess I figured that was one of their bullshit training camps, another thing I failed. They just...” Trevor sighed and flopped down on the couch, still in his damp jeans. He leaned forward, hands cupped loosely between his thighs. “Grandpa told me my soulmark had come out wrong, that they wouldn’t be looking for the match. That’s all they ever really said.”

“What about your parents?” Adrian filled the kettle with water and flipped the switch to heat it.

Trevor shook his head. “Everyone got weird and quiet whenever it came up. Like they all knew something was wrong with me, but no one wanted to talk about it. And I...I never knew it was you. Here,” he said, tapping a fist over his heart—over his _soulmark_ — “or that day in the desert. Dracula and Alucard were bedtime stories, kinda. Ways to keep us scared and in line. No one ever fucking told me that... _fuck_ ,” he said, scrubbing his hands through his hair and bowing his body forward, until his forehead almost touched his knees, his dark hair hanging lank and damp around his face.

Adrian sat down next to him, sliding his arm around Trevor’s waist and resting his chin on Trevor’s back, as he’d done in wolf form. “No one told me about you, either.”

 _I know we should have_ , Adrian’s mother had said, her eyes wet with tears—her heartbreak on his behalf so palpable that he couldn’t maintain any sense of betrayal.

What had mattered, in the moment, was keeping their son safe—treating the physical evidence of his trauma, and taking him far from those who might hurt him further. The rest almost seemed irrelevant. What did an eight-year-old need to know of a soulmate whose very existence made them enemies?

 _We intended to explain when you were older_ , Adrian’s father had said, his voice calm but his eyes burning red with long-restrained fury. _They took that choice from us, too. We were wrong to let them._ He’d stopped, seemingly ready to leave it there—then, for the first time in Adrian’s life, softened his voice enough to add: _I am sorry, son._

It took two years for Trevor’s parents to wrest control from his grandfather. During that time, Adrian’s burn healed, as much as a wound that deep could. The Belmonts returned to their usual pattern: rousting Dracula from his nest, but not pursuing further. Vlad raged, and chafed at the stalemate, narrowly held back from rampant bloodshed. Even Lisa was beginning to question the wisdom of restraining him.

And then, suddenly, it stopped. Shortly after Adrian’s tenth birthday, a group of Belmonts arrived in a small seaside town where the Ţepeş family had been settled for nearly eight months. There were fewer of them than usual, and fewer weapons: only Trevor’s parents, and three tall, grim-faced men who had been instrumental in the overturn of power.

“The bargain,” Adrian said, “was that my parents would leave, one more time. They could go anywhere in the world they wished, as long as it was far from any Belmonts. And you and I were never to see, or hear about, one another.”

“So you never knew we were soulmates,” Trevor said.

“No,” Adrian said. “Not until well after I’d already fallen in love with you.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Sometimes I think you like me better as a wolf,” Adrian grumbled, slipping back into his clothes after he’d spent close to two hours sprawled on the couch with Trevor, his furry head in Trevor’s lap and Trevor rubbing behind his ears, both of them watching a strangely captivating documentary about cheese.

Trevor had, with predictable resistance, agreed some weeks prior to watch a show about winemaking so he could have his frankly offensive views on the matter corrected. To both their surprise, he’d been glued to the screen throughout and had spent the next week searching for other food-related documentaries. Then again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Trevor had always been interested in learning, wanting to know far more than the limited education his family had provided.

“If you’d let me pet you like this,” Trevor said, trying to drag a protesting, human-shaped Adrian into his lap, “then you wouldn’t _have_ to turn into the bloody wolf so often.”

“Stop,” Adrian demanded, then pressed their foreheads together when Trevor immediately loosed his hands, as attentive as ever to Adrian’s periodic need for space.

Adrian’s wolf form—sharp-toothed and intimidating to anyone with a shred of sense, but with a thick undercoat of apparently immensely pettable fur—gave Trevor the opportunity to display the unrestrained, open affection Adrian ordinarily only permitted in bed, when he was relaxed and sated after sex. It was difficult, still, for Adrian to let down all the guards he’d spent more than twenty years building. But he’d been trying.

“I love you,” Adrian said, in an exchange of breath, not quite a kiss.

Adrian could feel Trevor’s smile under the light brush of his lips. He clearly never tired of hearing it.

“You love me even though I can’t turn into a big fucking wolf,” Trevor said, with a warm, teasing gruffness to his voice.

“You do quite enough damage in this form,” Adrian replied, lounging back into Trevor’s lap and carefully ignoring the white fur left behind on his boyfriend's dark jeans. “I can’t imagine the kinds of messes I’d have to clean if you could transform into a beast.”

“Hey,” Trevor protested mildly, taking the unspoken invitation to dig his fingers into the golden hair fanning across the couch cushions. “I shook out all the rugs on Tuesday. And vacuumed ‘em yesterday. I only put that part off because the fucking motor nearly burnt out the last time, and I had to spend half an hour cutting hair out of the roller brush. Guess what color it was, Adrian. C’mon, one guess.”

“I’m not interested in discussing your household chores, as long as you complete them on schedule,” Adrian replied loftily. “I scrubbed both the bathroom and the kitchen in that time, and I have no intention of disclosing the horrors I discovered in the drains.”

“Not brown, not white, but gold,” Trevor answered anyway. “And every strand was like three fucking feet long. It probably took me closer to an hour to unravel everything and get the damn thing going again. How can you lose that much hair in one week and still have any left on your head?”

Adrian saw fit to change the subject back to an earlier, and more interesting, topic. “Your entirely human genes aside, I can’t picture you as a wolf. If you could turn into any sort of animal, you’d be a raccoon.”

Trevor laughed. “The dumpster thing was _one time_ , you asshole. I would’ve kissed you any damn place I’d found you.”

“Not because of your fondness of garbage,” Adrian corrected. “Besides, raccoons merely scavenge because of the humans encroaching on their territory. Although I suppose that makes this comparison even more accurate: they’re clever and adaptable.”

“I’m confused; that sounded kinda like a compliment,” Trevor said, nimbly braiding a section of Adrian’s hair. Each movement gave a lightly pleasurable tug to Adrian’s sensitive scalp; it was making his limbs languid and his eyes heavy.

“Mm,” Adrian said. “Perhaps. But you also look exactly like one in the mornings. You really should trim your hair.”

“That’s not what you said when you had your pretty hands buried in it last night.”

“What one says in the midst of sex should never be used against him in the light of day,” Adrian replied, closing his eyes and turning to his side to give Trevor better access for the next braid.

“I never asked you this,” Trevor said after a few moments, when Adrian was close to drifting off. “Can all vampires turn into giant-ass wolves? I always thought it was just bats. Wasn’t even sure that was true; I don’t think anyone in the last three generations has seen it happen.”

“I don’t know if the wolf is unique to me,” Adrian said. “There aren’t many vampires left in the world to ask. But my father and I can both transform into a bat. I haven’t done it in a while.”

“Huh,” Trevor said, then, “that’s it?”

“Ten seconds ago, you were impressed by a single physical transformation. Now two isn’t enough?”

“Well now I know it’s possible to do more,” Trevor said, that ridiculous love of knowledge kicking in again. He had all his family’s obsession with compiling information, but simply channeled it into harmless pursuits like winning trivia night every week at the pub.

Or, nearly every week. He and Adrian were no longer permitted to be on the same team, since it gave them a quote unquote unfair advantage over everyone else in this bloody town. The same went for charades night, which Adrian found he enjoyed rather more than he’d expected.

At this point, however, Trevor was barely allowed on _any_ team, or even in the building, since he generally read Adrian’s body language within seconds and mumbled the answers aloud, leaving the clueless members of Adrian’s team free to blatantly cheat off of him. The last time they’d played charades, Isaac had shoved a handful of bar popcorn into Trevor’s mouth halfway through, leaving Trevor spitting out stale kernels and knocking two just-filled pitchers of cheap beer into the lap of an incandescently angry Sypha. Trevor’s team had still lost by a quite epic margin.

Really, it was amazing they had any friends left in town at all.

“Out of all the creatures in your tattoo, I can only turn into one,” Adrian said. “Although a clever artist could likely change the butterflies into bats.”

“Yeah, but that’s your dad, too. Don’t really want a whole family reunion on me,” Trevor replied with a shudder. “Damn though, I was kinda hoping for a bunny. Fuzzy little thing with buck teeth and floppy ears.”

Their first family dinner had gone well, if a bit stiffly. Vlad had, at no point, looked as though he wanted to sink his fangs into the side of Trevor’s throat, and Trevor had sat very still and carefully kept his jokes to a minimum.

That strained peace had lasted until the second bottle of wine, at which point they’d begun a quickly stamped out contest to see who had the raunchiest, most inappropriate sense of humor. At the close of the evening, Adrian’s mother had handed him a casserole dish, and his father had invited Trevor back to look over his collection of antique weaponry, some of which had probably belonged to Trevor’s ancestors. Left unspoken was how, exactly, he had obtained the items.

Vlad liked his son’s boyfriend. He hadn’t said as much, and likely wouldn’t for some time, but Adrian had twenty-two years of experience in reading his moods.

“You realize if I was a rabbit, I’d probably still have fangs,” Adrian said. He rolled onto his back so he could trace over the wolf inked across Trevor’s bare chest. The wolf was running in a diagonal from Trevor’s heart to a couple inches below his collarbone—a long-legged form with alert ears and powerful muscles, its tail streaming behind like a banner. It was a small thing to have caused so much trouble, and such heartache.

Adrian could hardly remember his own soulmark. It, like most of the day he’d had it taken from him, had been largely seared from his memory.

Trevor had locked his away, protecting it with tangled branches and a cascade of flowers whose meanings Adrian didn’t yet know. The wolf looked wild, still, and beautifully free. But the forest felt lonely to Adrian, with the wolf it shielded perpetually caught in motion, searching for something. Or someone.

“What’re you thinking?” Trevor asked, shifting a little beneath Adrian’s weight. They’d been lounging lazily for too much of the day—a rare treat, when both of them had a Saturday free and no reason to either fully dress or step foot out of their apartment. Adrian was the one, now, who missed Trevor during his overnight shifts at the fire station. His bed felt too large, too cold, without his snoring, touch-hungry personal radiator constantly gravitating into his space.

“I was thinking,” Adrian said. “That we should make dinner. And that your legs must have fallen asleep by now.” There were also some chores—laundry, as the most pressing—that he’d been putting off, although he’d avoid giving Trevor that kind of domestic ammunition.

“You’re kinda heavy and I’ve had to piss for like fifteen minutes,” Trevor agreed, tucking a braid behind Adrian’s ear and drawing the broad, slightly rough backs of his fingers along Adrian’s jawline. Neither of them moved.

Adrian stroked again over the wolf’s muzzle: finely detailed, as soulmarks always were, with even the whiskers visible as delicate lines of ink. Like all soulmarks, like Adrian’s would have been, the wolf was shaded in greys to give depth but was largely composed of that impossibly dark soul-black that no tattooist’s ink could ever replicate. Adrian—a white wolf, a shapeshifter, a vampire—was nothing Trevor would have ever expected...or wanted. Yet Trevor had chosen him anyway.

“I was also thinking that I’m glad,” Adrian admitted, the quiet comfort of their apartment and Trevor’s steady gaze making him honest. “Not for the way it happened. But that, despite it all, we finally found each other.”

It wasn’t everything that he wanted—that he _needed_ —to say to Trevor, but it was a start. And for the first time in months, Adrian couldn’t bring himself to worry about what the future held. He was with Trevor, in their home. For the present, that was enough.


	16. Chapter 16

Although Lisa Ţepeş was both the primary owner of Persephone Books and significantly more extroverted than her son, any coordination of their author events always fell to Adrian. He wasn’t certain if it was because he was more interested in that side of their business, or if his mother simply didn’t relish the prospect of tracking down charismatic authors and convincing them that a backwoods town was worth visiting.

“We’re only two hours from a major university, and thirty minutes from an airport,” Adrian said with a scowl, drawing a thick black line through Friday's scheduled event, then placing the whiteboard, not gently, back in the window display. Granted, it was a single terminal airport that only accommodated propeller planes, but it had a wide range of connecting flights. “He also knew exactly how to get here, since I gave his agent detailed instructions three weeks ago. Pretentious bastard. He could’ve at least come up with a more believable lie.”

Trevor, who probably hadn’t expected to walk into a tirade during his lunch break, stopped poking through the new tote rack, leaving a row of canvas pencil pouches swinging. He came close enough to palm Adrian’s ass with a light squeeze, which made Adrian shoot a death glare at him and, implausibly, relax slightly. The store was quiet, at least, at this hour, and the last few customers had merely been browsing, not paying attention to him or needing his help.

It was both the blessing and curse of running a small business in a small town.

“Did you have to pay the bastard anything?” Trevor asked, cracking his knuckles like he was preparing to retrieve the money himself.

“No, but thank you for that estimation of my store’s value,” Adrian sighed. “It’s meant to be mutually beneficial: increasing our sales, and giving authors publicity and the opportunity to read their works in front of prospective buyers. In this case, his publisher was paying his travel fees, which is why it’s fucking infuriating to have the reading cut off last minute like this. It makes me think he’d never actually planned to purchase a plane ticket. Or...”

“What?” Trevor asked when Adrian trailed off, his blistering anger too tiring to maintain for long.

Adrian had withdrawn his phone from his pocket and was scrolling through it. “His Saturday reading’s still on the university bookstore’s schedule. It’s possible they just haven’t updated it yet.” It was far more likely that despite their agreement, the asshole had simply decided he didn’t want to drive an extra two hours for the possibility of a handful of his books selling.

“He only got that fucking gig because of your contacts there, right? Call them again.”

Adrian laughed, his irritation simmering down to manageable levels. “Dr. Mayhew, about that poetry night I spent two hours talking you into...no. No, it’s fine. I wish he hadn’t strung me along for weeks and then cancelled with a bullshit excuse, but he’s probably right that it wouldn’t be worth the extra time. I never have been able to get our poetry section moving.”

“I bought a book last week,” Trevor said, as though the purchase of a single item could alleviate Adrian’s concerns.

“Murakami isn’t poetry. And I suspect you only bought that one because he writes, rather badly, about sex. Are you still disappointed that my secret stash of backroom books is actually reserved for Sypha, and not smut?”

“Is there smutty poetry?” Trevor asked, fully distracted now. Adrian had likely lost him for the rest of the day. “There is, there has to be. Why don’t you ever read that kinda stuff to me?”

“Because I’m generally not trying to make you horny,” Adrian said. It typically had the same result, anyway; Trevor claimed he couldn’t help it, that he liked the lyricism in Adrian’s voice, that the shape of Adrian’s lips around the words made him ache to taste them.

Not that he’d put it precisely in those terms; Adrian was extrapolating. Usually, he just got hard halfway through, and then started kissing his way up the length of Adrian’s body until Adrian was cut off, mid-verse, by Trevor’s eager mouth.

Trevor still wasn’t a fan of poetry. But with the book tossed to the side, Adrian gasping out a far less polished stream of language, he couldn’t find much cause for complaint.

“C’mon professor, there has to be one we’d both be into,” Trevor was saying now.

“Why do you always call me that?” Adrian asked, abruptly.

“I dunno,” Trevor said, taking the question in stride. “You’re always so...happy, I guess, whenever we talk about books. When you get really into it, when you’re lecturing me about something, it’s almost like you switch into...” He paused to think about it, his forehead scrunching. “I was gonna say a different person, but it’s not that. It’s just you with all the polite fuckin’ layers stripped off. It’s not a big stretch to see you in front of a classroom. Maybe with some of those hot-for-teacher glasses, if you really wanna know how I’m picturing it.”

Adrian huffed and rolled his eyes. “I have better than perfect vision, Trevor. And you know perfectly well I despise people who wear glasses for purely aesthetic purposes. They’re a medical necessity, not a fashion statement.” When Trevor grinned at him, Adrian flushed slightly, suspecting he’d fallen neatly into some sort of trap.

“It doesn’t always have to be a literary lecture, professor,” Trevor said, with a smirk that was far too self-satisfied. He was probably thinking about revisiting the glasses debate later, in a different context. “But hey, does it bother you? Me calling you that.”

“No,” Adrian said after a moment. Far from bothering him, it... “Trevor? What made you want to be a firefighter?”

Trevor scratched at his shaggy hairline, uncomfortable with having the conversation turned back on him. It was something Adrian had learned about him early on; Trevor didn’t particularly like being the center of attention. “No special reason. I didn’t have a lot of options when I left home.”

Adrian knew, from previous discussions, the parts that Trevor was skirting past. He had a strained, not entirely broken, relationship with his parents. Cutting his ties to them—and their purse strings—on his eighteenth birthday was a difficult but necessary step to keep that relationship from fracturing beyond repair. Trevor disagreed with his family on a number of issues, but perhaps more than that, he needed his independence—to find out who he was on his own, and how he intended to spend his future. Which was precisely why Adrian was asking him this now.

“I wasn’t picky. All I really needed was a bed and some food,” Trevor said. “But I had really shitty roommates, and even shittier jobs for a while. Wasn’t much I could do without a degree. I’d already turned down the school my parents got me into, and I couldn’t afford anything else without their help, so.” He shrugged, using his fingernail to scrape at some tape that’d gotten stuck to a shelf—probably a remnant of old signage.

Adrian watched it peel free, leaving behind a sliver of crisp white paint that’d been sheltered for years from the sun’s harsher rays. “Would you ever go back?”

Trevor had more money now—not a lot, but enough tucked away in savings to pay for whatever scholarships and loans wouldn’t cover at a decent school. And that was, of course, assuming he wouldn’t let Adrian contribute.

Trevor shook his head decisively. “No. I’m not like you. I like learning shit, but I don’t like doing it in a classroom, where people grade you by how much you agree with them.”

That learning style—seeking knowledge for its own sake, with a constant drive to question everything and challenge the accepted answers—would’ve made Trevor either a nightmare or a blast of much-needed fresh air, depending upon which types of professors he’d encountered. While Adrian had his share of good experiences, he’d met far too many who fit into the first category.

Their conversation was interrupted by a customer who wanted a special order. Adrian wrote down the information, smiling pleasantly and promising to contact her once it arrived, but little of his mind was focused on the transaction. He’d found that to be true rather too often of late, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the shift in his attitude had begun. Perhaps the vague sense of dissatisfaction had always been present, and he’d only recently started to notice.

Trevor had drifted to the magazine racks in the meantime, idly flipping through their contents while he waited for Adrian to return. He set the last one down—in the wrong spot, of course—and twisted his wrist to check his watch, probably remembering that he should be heading back to the station.

The weather had been fairly wet lately, making Trevor’s schedule a bit more flexible—and his captain more lenient—but there was always something else on the agenda. Training, maintenance work, equipment testing, and even occasional speaking engagements at schools or public events, although Trevor did his best to steer clear of those. He had, to the despair of almost everyone in the county, even bowed out of the annual firefighting calendar fundraiser.

Adrian had been quietly pleased, content with his personal stash of photos that he never intended to share.

“So do you like what you do?” he asked Trevor once he’d parted ways with the unwelcome customer. “Is there anything you’d change, if you had the chance?”

“Probably not,” Trevor said, lifting his eyebrows but not asking, yet, why Adrian was quizzing him. “I know I kinda stumbled into this, but. Yeah, I like it. They judge you mostly on what you can physically do, which made a big difference when I was fuckin’ nineteen and struggling. I just had to show them my high school diploma, do some fitness tests, pass a psych exam—fuck off, I rated better on that than when they checked my fucking credit.”

Adrian tamped down his smile. “And then they trained you how to put out fires.”

“Yeah. The other certifications—EMT and shit—were things you could pick up after you got hired, instead of knocking you out of the running if you didn’t already have ‘em. Wasn’t a bad deal.”

Adrian restacked a few books that had migrated from their displays. It was possible, he realized, that it sounded as though he was criticizing Trevor’s life choices, which was as far from the truth as one could get. “It suits you,” he said. “And I don’t just mean the uniform. I’m constantly hearing from your colleagues—and your captain—how fortunate they are to have you.”

Trevor looked uncomfortable again, but a little pink from the praise. “I guess. I just like doing something that helps people. The world’s kinda meaningless, you know? Everyone’s fighting each other for just...bullshit, stuff they don’t even fucking need. I can’t change any of that, but at least this way I can try to fix some of the shit that gets broken.”

And there it was—the answer Adrian had been pressing for. It wasn’t new information, exactly, but he’d been struggling for some time with a decision that he couldn’t fit into the practical side of his brain.

He was tired of spending his days obsessing over money. It’d always be a necessity, of course, unless he permanently turned into a wolf and fled to the wilderness, but it was particularly grating on days like this, when he was thinking far less about the words he loved than about how to market and sell them to people.

Adrian’s mother operated differently; she always had. She saw the bookstore as a way to meet people, to interact with them, to potentially—perhaps not often—send them home with a book that might bring them joy. Adrian’s view was much darker, and had been growing increasingly so. All it reminded him, day after day, was that he was surrounded by people who didn’t value the things that mattered most to him. It was beginning to make him resentful, as angry with himself as with anyone else around him.

The problem was that putting it into words didn’t yield an easy solution. Perhaps it was mere restlessness—staying in one place for too long after spending much of his childhood on the road. Or maybe—

“Hey, I’ve really gotta go,” Trevor said, grabbing hold of Adrian for a quick, apologetic kiss. “I’ll see ya tonight, professor.”

Adrian stood in the middle of the store, fingers absently touching his still-parted lips, and thought about it.


	17. Chapter 17

“Do you really think becoming a college professor will give you a _better_ view of humanity?” Sypha asked, reaching across the table to dip a limp fry in the aioli Adrian had been carefully hoarding for himself.

“Would you please get your own,” he said.

“Finished mine already,” Sypha replied. “Besides, you’ve been letting Trevor share yours.”

Adrian gave her a flat look. “Do I really need to explain the difference?”

Sypha sighed and tried to wave down the bartender, whose attention at the moment was fully fixed on Trevor. “Looks like the new guy’s trying very hard to share something else with you,” she said.

Adrian glanced at the bar. Trevor was chatting easily with the man behind it, some new arrival whose name Adrian frankly couldn’t remember—something that started with an E or a Z. He was fresh out of school and staying with his aunt while he figured out what to do next. Adrian couldn’t exactly blame him for that, or for the fact that he was currently doing far more hopeful leaning and suggestive lip-biting than actual bartending.

He rolled his eyes and transferred another handful of crinkle-cut fries to his plate, half-paying attention to Sypha, who’d transitioned to muttering some dig at Trevor that included the words _completely oblivious_. Adrian didn’t correct her, although it was actually a fundamental misunderstanding of the kind of person Trevor was. Adrian had initially fallen into that trap, too, reading him only on a surface level. Attractive, in a boorish sort of way, with a rudimentary grasp on social niceties.

People tended to see what they wanted, and Trevor was comfortable enough in his own skin to be fine with that. To, as he put it, not give a flying fuck about what other people thought.

In reality, he was fully aware of his own appeal; it was just easier to play dumb and ignore unwanted attention than to go through the hassle of gently but firmly letting people down. He was also, to Adrian’s amusement, capable of taking advantage of it when it suited his purposes.

When the bartender finally ducked down to retrieve a cocktail shaker, Trevor turned enough to catch Adrian’s eye, then winked shamelessly. In all likelihood, he’d be returning momentarily with a tray of free drinks, or at least some complimentary shots, and a swagger.

Adrian simply lifted his half-empty aioli cup, and Trevor nodded.

Message conveyed, Adrian turned his attention back to his companions. Sypha had never quite seemed to understand that he didn’t particularly mind others recognizing how desirable his boyfriend was. All it did was make things more satisfying when they inevitably realized that Trevor was, and always would be, wholly off-limits.

Adrian had never claimed to be an _entirely_ good person.

Hector, busy tucking scraps of food into a napkin, spoke up quietly. “Sypha’s right, though. You remember how burned out half our professors were. And think of the classes we took, especially anything listed as a requirement—sitting in a lecture hall didn’t necessarily mean we wanted to be there.”

“I know,” Adrian said. His university years were still fresh in his memory; he’d had plenty of time to think of the downsides. “Truthfully, I don’t think there is such a thing as an ideal scenario.”

All jobs are shit, as Trevor would say. What matters is what you do with them.

“But you still want to take out more loans? Have you even finished paying off the last ones?” Sypha asked, pushing her sleeve up so she could reach for the buffalo wings. She sounded more concerned than purely judgmental, at least.

Adrian nudged the food closer to her, swapping it with the bowl of brussels sprouts that, unfortunately, looked and tasted like they’d come straight out of a long-forgotten freezer bag and were significantly slimier for the experience. The pub’s food wasn’t bad, exactly, but it had a limited menu, and their group was exhausting its options.

Hector mostly just looked happy to be eating something that he’d had no hand in cooking. He finished stripping the meat off a wing and folded his sauce-sticky napkin securely around it. “I sat in on that class you were TAing for Dr. Mayhew. I think more people showed up for your study sessions than the actual lectures. You’d be good at it; neither of us is doubting that. It’s just a long road.”

A long road that might land him in more debt, with no promise of a job at the end of it. Even if Adrian did land a teaching position, he’d likely spend years saddled with composition requirements for first years, struggling to inject a love of literature into students who were far more interested in their newfound freedom and expanding sexual opportunities.

But there would be exceptions. Students like himself and Hector, who truly loved learning and sought out professors who could help them grow. And maybe a few like Trevor, who were brilliant in atypical ways, if you had the patience to learn how to read them.

Perhaps most importantly, Adrian would be doing something he truly loved: spending every day not just surrounded by books, but sinking wholeheartedly into their pages, then sharing with others what he'd found. There was an idealism, certainly, to that vision of his future. But it was nice to finally feel even the inklings of excitement and hope.

“It’s not as though I’ll have a new career tomorrow, or even next year,” Adrian pointed out. “Maybe I’ll tire of graduate school and change my mind before I’ve finished my degrees. But I’d like to at least try it.”

“Are we talking about Professor Adrian?” Trevor asked, setting two new metal cups of aioli in front of him, then distributing their drinks. “Sorry it took so long,” he said, with what was meant to be a quick brush of his lips against Adrian’s.

Adrian held him fast by his shirt collar to lick into his beer-flavored mouth, making it linger. He could feel Trevor grinning into the kiss, enjoying this open display of possessiveness, which made him a little bit of a bastard. But then again, so was Adrian.

“Fuck all of you,” Trevor said, a little breathlessly, when Adrian finally released him. He slid into the booth, wrapping one arm easily over Adrian’s shoulders, and pointed to the wings plate, which was now entirely empty, save for a few suspicious stains. “I only ate like three of those. You couldn’t leave me any while I was getting your fucking drinks?”

“I believe you’ll have to fight Hector’s dog for the rest,” Adrian replied.

Hector jumped guiltily and looked as though he was prepared to peel open his napkin to offer the remnants to Trevor. Knowing Trevor would likely accept the soggy, paper-flecked scraps, Adrian immediately pushed his own plate toward his boyfriend.

“Take mine. I prefer food that doesn’t require me to gnaw it off a greasy bone.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Trevor muttered under his breath, then, when Adrian flicked his thigh in a sharp reprimand, buried the rest of his quips in a chicken wing.

Hunting in wolf form was both entirely different and far too private of a discussion for this group.

“So where are you applying?” Sypha asked. “Will Trevor be going with you?”

“Yeah,” Trevor answered, licking barbecue sauce off his fingers. “What kind of fucking question is that. Like he’s getting rid of me that easily.”

That conversation had been significantly less complicated than Adrian had anticipated. Trevor had listened, asked a few questions, then looked surprised when Adrian asked if he’d be willing to move.

 _I haven’t decided on—or been accepted to—a school yet_ , Adrian had reminded him. _It could be anywhere in the country. Not to mention what will happen when I’m searching for a position, if I get that far. Jobs in the Humanities are extraordinarily competitive, and often in less than ideal locations._

 _I don’t care_ , Trevor had replied. _Look, Adrian, I told you a long time ago I was planning to move on after a few months here. I only stayed because of you. Of course I’m going to fucking come with you._

Adrian had frowned, not willing to let Trevor give in that easily. _You have a career, too. One that’s currently far more established and important than mine. I don’t want you to give up on your life to follow my whims._

Trevor had simply shrugged, still looking far too at ease with this decision, and with the much bigger one that they both understood Adrian was proposing: spending the rest of their lives together.

 _The world’s always gonna be on fire,_ he’d said. _Wherever we go, they’ll need helping putting it out. And if shit’s gonna be burning down around us anyway...I mean, fuck, Adrian. You should know by now that I want to be with you when that happens._


	18. Chapter 18

“So tell me the truth,” Trevor said. He shoved his hand in Adrian’s back pocket, using it as leverage to steer them home. “Is it a weird dominance thing? You hate dogs because you need to growl at them to prove you’re the bigger badder wolf.”

“You’re an idiot,” Adrian said, leaning into the warmth of Trevor’s body. They’d stayed at the pub nearly until closing: he, Trevor, Sypha, and a handful of guys from the station who’d joined them shortly before Hector left. Trevor had gone outside for a few minutes—to get some air, he’d said—and Adrian had gone looking for him after he’d been missing for half an hour.

Hector hadn’t gotten far; he and Trevor were both crouched down on the pavement, playing with a wrigglingly happy mastiff-mix who’d been taking a long nap outside and was glad to finally have company again.

“Or is it jealousy,” Trevor continued. “You don’t like me showing that much attention to other big fuzzy beasts.”

“I trust I’m not in danger of losing you to Hector’s latest stray,” Adrian replied dryly. “I simply wasn’t interested in petting him. He was very badly in need of a bath.”

“Hector’s still working on that part. Says the dog goes along with pretty much everything else now, but the minute a faucet turns on, he’s bolting for the hills.”

“Rather like you,” Adrian said. “Including when I’m merely asking you to do the dishes.”

Trevor chuckled but didn’t take the bait. “It’s kind of a bummer,” he said after a bit, letting go of Adrian so he could unlock their door. “Cap’s been talking about getting a puppy for the firehouse. Probably just some mutt, not a dalmatian or anything, but he’d still be good for morale and school trips, shit like that. I was figuring we could take him home some weekends, on rotation. Maybe steal him when we move.”

He actually sounded wistful, like this—not stealing someone else’s dog, but having their own—was a thing he genuinely wanted but was willing to give up for Adrian.

Adrian locked the door behind them and bent to unlace his boots. “I had a dog. When I was a child.”

“Huh,” Trevor said, then, “What happened?”

It would be easy to simply reply, _It didn’t work out_ , or to let Trevor continue to believe he despised anything on four legs.

“I was six,” he said. “Too young to care for an animal on my own, but I’d spent years asking my parents for one. We found him by the side of the road, in a box. Someone had dumped a litter, or perhaps just him, since he was a runty little thing, but full of energy. My father wanted to leave him there; my mother suggested we take him with us and find him a home. I begged to keep him. I believe I cried.”

Trevor shrugged off his jacket and filled two glasses of water at the sink. “And they didn’t let you?”

“No,” Adrian said. “The issue was that they did. We’d barely had him six months before we had to flee again.”

“Shit,” Trevor said softly.

Adrian accepted the glass Trevor offered him, taking two mouthfuls before setting it down. Unlike Trevor, he didn’t need the extra hydration to offset a hangover. “Usually we had a bit more notice. I don’t know if my family had gotten more careless, or yours more clever. It was the least we’d ever been able to take with us. Necessities only, no time to search for anything sentimental that wasn’t easily on hand.”

“But your dog,” Trevor blurted, then winced, immediately hearing how obvious and insensitive that was. “Shit, sorry, I just...”

Many of Adrian’s childhood memories were hazy, but that night stood clear. “We couldn’t find him. I still don’t know if he hid when he smelled the smoke, or if there was a possibility he’d gotten out. My father had to carry me. I sank my fangs into him, twice, trying to make him turn back. The only time I’ve ever bitten someone, and it was my own father. I still remember the bitter taste of his blood.”

“What was he like? Your dog,” Trevor asked, watching Adrian’s face to see if he was pushing too far into restricted territory. He’d followed Adrian to the bathroom, propping himself against the doorframe as Adrian took down his toothbrush and the toothpaste that Trevor had never once capped properly.

Adrian spat into the sink, twisting on the tap until the white foam swirled away. “Small. Grey, with a wiry coat. He looked a little like a cairn terrier, but he had mismatched eyes and one ear that never stood up properly. My father named him Cerberus, but I usually just called him Bear.”

Trevor had straightened up and was staring at him, mouth agape.

“I was, I will remind you, six,” Adrian said, unaccountably ruffled by Trevor taking objection to this portion of the story, but Trevor gave one sharp shake of his head and started digging through his pockets.

“Where the fuck,” he muttered, dumping out his keys, five mangled sticks of gum, a bottle cap, a pen Adrian had spent half a day looking for, and finally his wallet. “Sorry, still kinda drunk, but. Look.”

Trevor kept photos in his wallet. He flipped through them, too quickly for Adrian to catch the faces that flashed by, glimpses of a life he still hadn’t fully shared. He stopped at one near the back and slid it out of the brittle plastic holder. Its glossy surface stuck, briefly, then tugged free: evidence of its age and the time it had spent fixed in one place.

“If you were six, I was eight,” Trevor said gruffly, holding the photo out. “And when I was eight, my parents woke me up, late one night, and told me they’d brought me a dog. I never knew why. My dad...I remember he smelled like smoke, and he looked pretty fucking angry, which I thought was weird, when he was bringing me a present. He said there’d been a house fire.”

Trevor grinned up at Adrian from the photo: a much smaller version, with the same dark hair and bright blue eyes. There were two girls on either side of him—taller, older, with strong features and friendly smiles. Trevor’s sisters, whom Adrian had heard about but never seen.

And, in Trevor’s arms, caught mid-motion, licking him on the chin, was Adrian’s little bear cub.

“My family’s not all bad,” Trevor said. “They’ve done shitty things. My dad was probably part of the group that lit the fire that night. He spent a lotta years following orders, doing things he didn’t really like. But I think...I don’t know if he went into the house to get your dog, or if he found him outside somewhere. I think it took him a long fucking time to figure out he needed to do the same for people, not just animals.”

“What happened to him?” Adrian asked, quietly, touching the shiny tip of Bear’s nose.

“I took him with me when I left home,” Trevor said. “S’part of why I had such shitty apartments for a while, actually. He was old by then and never really barked much, but even a little dog made it harder to find decent places I could actually afford.”

“But you brought him anyway,” Adrian said.

“Well yeah,” Trevor said, like any other option was unfathomable. “He was my buddy, ever since I was a kid. I just never had any idea that...fuck, there’s so much my parents never told me.”

“What did you name him?” Adrian asked, handing the photo back.

Trevor chuckled a little, shoving everything into his pockets, leaving the wallet for last. It took some effort to slide the photo back into place. “Uh. Scrappy. I dunno, I wasn’t that creative of a kid. Took a while to get him to answer to it, too. He was smart, though. And really fucking stubborn. Probably the best friend I ever had, before you.”

With his head ducked down, focused on rearranging the contents of his billfold—mostly crumpled receipts and very little actual money—Trevor didn’t notice at first when Adrian stepped closer, then swayed, heavily, into him. He made a surprised, confused noise, bumping back against the doorframe, his reaction time still a little dulled.

“Hey,” he said, his arms moving up in a belated response, his forgotten wallet pressing against Adrian’s shoulder blade. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry. I didn’t mean to...fuck, Adrian, I don’t even know what to say. I wish I could change every fucking horrible thing my family ever did to you.”

Adrian, a shade taller than Trevor, had to relax his ramrod-straight posture, bending his head down so he could turn his face toward Trevor’s throat, breathing in the familiar scent of beer and sweat and fried foods, with only the faintest hint of aftershave left from the morning. He loved this man. So much that it hurt, that he thought, sometimes, it might tear him apart.

“I’m glad he had a good life with you,” Adrian said, his voice muffled against Trevor’s skin.

Trevor’s arms tightened around him, holding his fragmenting pieces together.


	19. Chapter 19

“You’ve already met my father,” Adrian reminded Trevor. “On multiple occasions.”

“Fifth time’s when he rips my fucking throat out,” Trevor muttered. “Should I wear this shirt?”

“If you’re that concerned about the state of your throat, a higher collar will do very little to deter him. His fangs are significantly sharper than mine. Wear the t-shirt you had on earlier, Trevor. It’s comfortable, and dark enough that you can hardly tell when you start to sweat through it.”

“You’re an asshole,” Trevor replied, stripping off his stiff dress shirt and balling it up to lob it at Adrian’s head. He did immediately look more relaxed when he was back in t-shirt and jeans, examining his scruffy chin in the mirror.

Adrian kissed him behind his ear, idly sliding his fingertips down the front of Trevor’s pants.

Trevor jumped and swore, like they were already at the Ţepeş house and in danger of being caught.

“Hmm,” Adrian said, feigning disappointment. “I thought you might’ve been keeping my birthday present in there.”

“Would you fucking stop,” Trevor complained, straightening his clothes and giving up on whatever ideas of shaving he might’ve been contemplating. “I don’t care how fucking horny you get on your birthday; we’re not having sex until we get home.”

“You already sucked my cock this morning,” Adrian reminded him, kissing the side of Trevor’s neck but removing his hands, as he’d been asked. “Twice. Once to wake me up, which was quite pleasant and something we should repeat, and then again in the shower.”

“Okay, yeah,” Trevor admitted. “And you’re still asking for goddamn presents. Greedy bastard.”

He twisted in Adrian’s arms to kiss him, keeping the pressure light and relatively chaste. “Look,” he said after a bit, resting his forehead against Adrian’s. “I know it’s stupid, but I want your parents to like me, okay?”

“We live together,” Adrian reminded him. “My parents are well aware of the fact that we have sex.”

Trevor grimaced. “I know, but I’d really rather not be thinking about that when your dad’s shooting death glares at me with those fucking terrifying red eyes of his. And your mom...she’s really nice. I like her. I’d just rather the stuff we do in private stays, y’know.”

“Between us,” Adrian filled in, kissing the tip of Trevor’s nose and handing him a pair of clean socks. Trevor was right; they should leave soon, anyway, and they still needed to pick up a bottle of wine on their way. “My parents are both very fond of you, Trevor. You don’t need to injure yourself trying to impress them.”

Trevor’s expression conveyed both utter disbelief and vague annoyance that Adrian would attempt to lie to him about something so important.

Adrian left it alone. Trevor would eventually figure it out on his own.

***

Dusk was falling as they left the store, Adrian carrying the wine and Trevor holding a bag of assorted cheeses and fresh baguettes. It took Adrian a few blocks to place why he was sinking into a quiet sense of nostalgia.

“That street lamp’s still out,” he said, nodding to the tall, slightly weather-worn green post by the Williams house.

Trevor glanced at it, his eyebrows scrunching down for a few seconds before his face cleared. His smile reached his eyes, softening the still-tense expression he’d been wearing for much of the afternoon. They were walking in the opposite direction but following the same path as the first night they’d spent significant time together—when Trevor had insisted on carrying Adrian's books.

“You had no idea how hard I was trying to ask you on a fucking date, did you,” Trevor said. “I figured you got that kind of thing all the time, and I was just...this fly buzzing around, irritating you.”

“A bumblebee,” Adrian said. “Large and hairy, far less intimidating than it seems, and oddly charming.”

“You like bumblebees,” Trevor said, somewhere between accusation and triumph. Adrian had caught one just the other day, carefully cupping it in his hands to release it from their balcony. It’d been bumping against their windows in gentle confusion, trying to get to the fresh-budding flowers outside.

“I do,” Adrian replied. “And so, incidentally, do my parents.”

Trevor laughed. The longer route was, as Adrian had hoped, giving him more time to unwind and simply be himself. “Ciara called me, by the way. I forgot to tell you. I’m supposed to pass along a birthday greeting.”

“Thank her for me,” Adrian said, not quite missing a step at the mention of Trevor’s oldest sister. “That was kind of her.”

As nicely as things were progressing with Adrian’s side of the family, the Belmonts were still a rather large and complicated question mark. Trevor’s parents had not responded well to the news of their son’s dating life, but they had also not ridden into town with swords and torches, so Adrian considered it a win.

They were trying. All of them, in their own ways, albeit some far slower than others.

“She wants to meet you, actually,” Trevor said, shooting quick glances at Adrian to see how he’d react to the notion. “Probably not this year, since she just had Sophie. But she’s talking about coming for a visit, or meeting someplace neutral, if you’re open to it.”

Ciara, ten years older than Trevor and a mother of three, was both more ingrained in the Belmont ways and increasingly sympathetic to a generation that was beginning to peel away from long-held traditions. Being present for the severing of Trevor’s soulbond—or, at least, the immediate aftermath—meant that she’d seen her family at its worst and was ready to consider that destroying her little brother’s happiness had, possibly, not been in his best interests.

“I think I’d like that,” Adrian said, meaning it more when he saw how much Trevor’s face brightened in response.

Although he didn’t communicate much with either of his parents, Trevor did talk to both his sisters fairly often, periodically checking in with his brother to make sure he was still focused on the usual teenage concerns: video games, mostly, with a heavy dose of sports and smatterings of romantic drama. As it turned out, having your parents pay off your soulmatch’s family and move her to town at the age of thirteen didn’t guarantee that you, as a sixteen year old boy with raging hormones, would stop being interested in other girls.

Dillon was giving the Belmonts a little bit of hell, and Trevor couldn’t help looking the slightest bit pleased by it.

“I think neutral territory is best, though,” Adrian said. “Depending of course on where we are by next year, but you’re still the only Belmont I’d want within at least a hundred miles of my father.”

“I have a feeling my sister will agree to that deal,” Trevor said, with a wry expression that told Adrian how much _he_ was looking forward to being in that kind of proximity to Vlad “Dracula” Ţepeş.

***

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Adrian’s mother said as he withdrew the tray from the oven. She quickly slid the next batch in and resumed dropping rounded spoonfuls of cookie dough onto the large metal sheet Adrian was emptying.

Not by eating the cookies on it, although that was a strong temptation.

“Oooh, that one broke, what a shame,” his mother said, smiling at him mischievously as she plucked a particularly chocolate-studded one from the edge of the cooling rack.

Halfway through the game night that had followed dinner, she’d decided to bake some of Adrian’s favorite cookies, even though they’d already eaten generous slices of his equally decadent birthday cake. Adrian suspected that her choice to transition to the kitchen had something to do with the last game they’d tried. His father and Trevor were still at the table, arguing fiercely over the Risk board and the blatantly illegal moves that both of them had been taking from the start.

“We should’ve stuck to Balderdash,” Adrian mused regretfully.

His mother laughed. “They’re having fun. And this is nice, isn’t it? The two of us haven’t cooked together like this in a while.”

Adrian pressed a sudden, impulsive kiss against the top of his mother’s blonde head. She looked up at him in pleased surprise, still licking stolen chocolate off her fingers. “I’d bake for you more often if I knew it’d get that kind of a response,” she said, smiling softly at him.

Spending four years away from his family during university had been made easier by the fact that they were still well within reach. Adrian had returned home for the summers, and on most weekends while his classes were in session. He’d continued to work periodic shifts at the store—partly to help his mother out, but mostly just to spend time with her.

He didn’t know yet where graduate school would be taking him, or how often he’d be able to return for visits. But it was clear that the more than two decades he’d spent in a closely-knit, complicated family were fast coming to an end.

Adrian badly wanted to take this branch in the road, to begin a fresh stage of his journey, but it was difficult not to spend a little time mourning what he’d lose in the process.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay without me?” he asked, finally posing the question he’d been dwelling on for some time. “You should start bringing in some more part-timers. Mary Grace might be interested, and possibly Victor.”

“That’s my responsibility. You focus on your applications,” his mother said, scraping the last bit of dough out of the mixing bowl and offering him the spoon. Adrian obediently licked it, as he’d done since he was four years old and had discovered that _humans can get sick from it, mama, let me eat it_ _for you._ Partly genuine concern, partly self-interest, as with most children.

When Adrian sighed, not showing as much appreciation for the sugary dough as he should have, his mother set her spoon down and turned him by the shoulders to face her. “Remember I’m the parent here,” she said. “And I’m a damn good one. You know how I know that? Because I raised a son who turned out as perfect as it’s possible for anyone to be.”

“Mother,” Adrian said, in considerable embarrassment. At least Trevor was too far across the room to hear, or to contribute.

“I mean it,” she said, shaking him slightly to make the words sink in. “I’ll be just fine. I can make my own choices about my life, just like you can, sweetheart. You don’t need to worry about any of that.”

Adrian started to ask her what she meant by _life choices_ , then picked up a gooey-centered cookie instead, realizing this was precisely what she was trying to tell him. Lisa Ţepeş, like her son, needed time to think through her own plans, whether that meant changing how she ran her shop, closing it entirely, traveling with her husband, or resuming her own schooling. Whatever she did, she’d be extraordinary at it, just as she’d always been as a mother.

She was watching him, quietly, with an assessing gaze that picked out all the emotions Adrian hadn’t been expressing. “Are you happy?” she asked him once she was done with her examination.

“Yes,” he said, not needing to pause to think about that one.

“And this—school, academia, everything involved with that world—it’s what you want to do with your future?”

Adrian looked across the room again, where Trevor was now leaning comfortably back in his chair, drinking one of the beers that Vlad had cracked open for him while Adrian was retrieving the usual set of wine glasses.

Belgian, Vlad had said, from a small brewery he’d visited during his last trip there. It was something that Adrian suspected he’d brought back specifically for Trevor, since neither of his parents had ever liked the taste.

Trevor laughed, suddenly, his handsome face gleeful and open, and pointed to something he’d been examining in the rulebook. Vlad took the pamphlet from him—between two sharp-nailed fingers, limply, like he was touching something long-dead—then rolled his eyes and moved a portion of his army off one of the territories he’d claimed.

“I don’t know,” Adrian said, honestly. The future could hold many things, and his path might branch again. All he knew for certain was that Trevor would be walking beside him when it did. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

**Author's Note:**

> _Expanded Content Notes:_
> 
> _Harm to Child_ : Significantly less violent than the show itself, but still worth mentioning: Chapter 14 goes into the backstory of Adrian's scar, which in this version happened when he was 8. The Belmonts discovered that Trevor shared a soulmark with a half-vampire, which was far too strong of a blow to their long-held beliefs about human (and Belmont) superiority. Their solution was to use a hot poker to burn Adrian's mark away, expecting this to break the bond. No graphic descriptions, but there are flashbacks with harsh anti-vampire language and Adrian and Lisa being kidnapped by the Belmonts.
> 
> _Significant Trauma_ : Adrian spent the first 10 years of his life constantly on the run with his family; because Lisa is alive in this AU, and Vlad had his (soft-hearted) human wife and young child to consider, he didn't take the fight to the Belmonts. Although believe me, he sorely wanted to.
> 
> _Religion_ : The Belmont family operates a bit like an organized religion, with restrictive rules and a multi-generational buildup of prejudice. Trevor is expected to marry a woman, produce more Belmont heirs, hate vampires, and carry on the family legacy. The latest generation is starting to think a bit differently, partially thanks to Trevor breaking away from his family, but change takes time.
> 
> _Unprotected Sex_ : The first time Trevor and Adrian have sex, they forgo a condom. As a half-vampire, Adrian doesn't catch or carry human diseases, but this is still not smart. Don't be like these horny dumbasses.
> 
> This is the first time I've written a soulmate AU, because I have complicated feelings about destiny vs choice. I tried to explore that a bit here, through Adrian's eyes. And through Trevor's general everything. I hope you enjoyed!


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